Political Ideology over the Life Course

Abstract

Young people tend to be more liberal than older people. This paper goes beyond that generality to describe more precisely how self-described political ideology varies with age. I distinguish period (across people of different ages at a moment in time) from cohort (changes in people as they get older) characterizations of this age-ideology gradient. Data are from General Social Surveys from 1974 through 2018, including synthetic cohorts formed from 5 year subsamples of the data. Ideology is measured on a {-1, 1} scale: liberals (conservatives) are -1 (+1) and moderates are 0. The average of this measure (Libcon) generally increases with age both within every 5-year sub-period and among all available cohorts; the shape of these gradients varies considerably across these sub-periods. However, the longer run central tendency is a very well defined concave gradient that rises over the whole life course. The period and cohort versions of this gradient essentially overlap. The change in mean Libcon from early adulthood (25) to old age (80) is substantial (over. 20 on the -1, 1 scale), and around half of this occurs after age 45. I discuss implications for “purple America” characterizations of political ideology and for the strain of literature emphasizing ideological “persistence.”