Generation Effect

THE GENERATION EFFECT or cohort effect describes an influence on voting behavior that is common across a given generation, which experiences the same stages of life under the same historical circumstance, and, thus, demonstrates similar trends in worldview and political outlook. This effect is not the same as simply age. Although there is a correlation between maturity and lack of education, for instance, this is not because older people leave their education behind, but because earlier generations had less formal education; this generation effect is better phrased as “people who came of age in the 1930s are less educated than people who came of age in the 1970s.”

Generational effects point to trends that remain true of an age cohort throughout its lifespan. The Lost Generation (coined in the 1920s and referring to artists and expatriates born at the end of the previous century) and the Beat Generation have both been prone to political and social alienation regardless of age. The Baby Boomers are perhaps the most famous generation, in that the American history of their lifetime is sometimes described as if it were their biographical narrative: they were born in the aftermath of World War II, children in the Golden Age of the 1950s, came of age during the Vietnam War and the counterculture, settled down in the calm years of detente, approached middle-age in the paranoid and acquisitive 1980s, and finally came to power with Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Boomers' fascination with their generation is most likely responsible for the popularity of the study of generation effects.

Baby Boomers are easily defined, though, as those children born when American soldiers returned from World War II, at least figuratively speaking. Generation X is much less clear; the term comes from a study of the sexual mores of Boomer teenagers, but was popularized by Douglas Coupland's novel of the same name to refer to Americans born in the early 1960s. Coupland's Generation X would therefore be approaching 50 now, but the use of the term by the media in his wake would set the endpoint much later, perhaps just before the rising birth rates of the late 70s. Coupland defined his generation as distinct in its resistance to definition, a generation of slackers and self-made millionaires, bloggers and novelists, losing their virginity early and marrying late, politically active and apathetic.

Researchers frequently attempt to paint a picture of the cycle of American generations; the descriptions reading almost like those of Zodiac signs. The attention paid to the Baby Boomers and to Generation X stirred up interest in generation-based psychology, both serious and popular, but it would take a great deal of time for a generation's proclivities to fully reveal themselves: the best-studied generation, the Boomers are just approaching retirement age. However, the [Page 280]generation effect does play a role, less in determining the generation's position on an issue, and more in influencing its strength of feeling—the degree to which the generation may feel politically alienated, entitled, or invested.