(65 percent of registered voters aged 65 to 74 voted in the 2002 congressional elections,
and 72 percent in the 2000 presidential election, the highest rate of voter participation
of any age group). They also own a greater share of the wealth, which means they wield
a great deal of economic and political power (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006).
In contrast, young people are virtually powerless. They are increasingly likely to
come from single-parent, disadvantaged families with little political influence and no
control over public resources. As children and adolescents, they cannot vote, and they
have few activist groups—their political participation occurs almost entirely under
the supervision of their parents. Their unemployment rate is nearly double that of
middle-aged people. They are just as vulnerable as elders, but they have no voice. As
young adults, they have more opportunities for political action, but they still cannot
match the economic vitality and political clout of the older generations.Youth and Poverty
In 2006 the poverty rate for children under 18 in the United States was 21.9 percent—
higher than in any other age group, and almost 3 percent higher than it had been
in 2000. (By comparison, the poverty rate for adults aged 18 to 64 was 11.3 percent
and for senior citizens aged 65 and over, 9.8 percent.) That’s more than 13 million
children. Children and adolescents represented 25.4 percent of the total population
but more than 40 percent of people living in poverty (Allegretto, 2006). The poverty
rate for children also varies by race and ethnicity, as shown in Table 11.3.
Many countries offer “family allowances” for children under 18, reasoning that
they are unable to work and therefore require support. In France, family allowances372 CHAPTER 11AGE: FROM YOUNG TO OLDSociologists use
three major
methods to
study social phe-
nomena over time. Let’s say that I want to
study attitudes toward a social issue:
Have people become more liberal or more
conservative during the last 30 years?
I could do a longitudinal study,
comparing the same group (cohort) at
various points in time as they age. For
instance, I find a group of 20-year-olds
in Pasadena, California, who are willing
to have their attitudes toward the social
issue tested. I return to the same group
every 10 years, testing them again as
30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, and 50-year-
olds. This method has a number of
difficulties: It’s hard to track everyone
down again, they may not grant
permission for new tests, and tenure
committees are usually unwilling to wait
30 years for the article to be finished.
However, with a smaller time frame (say,
months instead of years), it can be very
useful.
A special type of longitudinal study
called a time series studyinvolves
tracking the variable rather than the
cohort. That is, instead of testing the
same group every 10 years, I could find
different people to test. The study would
still take 30 years to complete, but
fortunately a number of national surveys
have been conducted regularly for that
long or longer, so we can examine their
data and conduct a time series study of
attitudes toward the social issue.Studying Age Cohorts
How do we know
what we know
Maybe I’m less interested in changes in
the social climate than in age itself. As
they get older, do people become more lib-
eral or more conservative in their attitude
toward the social issue? Instead of a lon-
gitudinal study, I can do a cross-sectional
study, comparing different age groups at
one moment in time. I don’t need to worry
about tracking down the same group or
producing a new study every 10 years;
instead, I can find groups who are 20, 30,
40, and 50 years old right now.
Cross-sectional studies are more
common in sociology than the other
types, because they don’t require real
time to pass. However, they also don’t
have quite the validity of the other types.
For instance, if I discover that 50-year-
olds are more conservative than 20-year-
olds, I will never know if it is because we
always get more conservative as we age,
or because these particular 50-year-olds
grew up in a different historical era than
these particular 20-year-olds.