When looking at the citation, the thought that immediately leaps to mind is that a hell of a lot has changed in American society and culture since 1977. As it happens, the second edition of "Cohort Analysis" is available in preview form from Google books ( http://books.google.com/books?id=KZrEevjbE80C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Norval+glenn+cohort+analysis&source=bl&ots=LWZtsuBY3e&sig=VIgMmkvwEHnWvIiJAIFPDjK6Gk4&hl=en&ei=4RyaTfWqGPOK0QH5h9n2Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=conservative&f=false), and Professor Glenn's revised study appears to take this societal change in consideration:
“ . . . not all changes that occur in individuals as they grow older are the results of aging. Especially in modern societies, people grow older not in a static society but in a changing one, and influences from social and cultural change impinge on persons as they grow older, bringing a bout changes in attitudes, behavior, health, and emotional states or offsetting effects that would result from aging in a static society. These period effects are confounded with age effects in the data from panel studies. To illustrate, in the United States, the birth cohorts that were in young adulthood in the 1970s had, as a whole, become more conservative in several respects by the late 1980s. One cannot tell how much, if any, of this shift resulted from influences associated with aging; the fact that the society as a whole changed in the same direction as the cohorts suggests that much, if not most, of the intracohort trend was brought about by period influences. Therefore panel studies that gauged the political attitudes of high school seniors in the mid-1970s and again 10 years later fail to provide strong evidence of any effects of the transition to adulthood.” (*Ibid*, p. 4.)
Of course, to determine the full scope of the change in Professor Glenn's thinking would require a comparison between the first and second editions of "Cohort Analysis"; but the question arises why a voter demographics study published in 2010 would cite a conclusion from a 1977 study that was completely revised in 2005, and which apparently no longer contains the cited conclusion. (A search in Google Books does not uncover the statement quoted on p. 21 of the demographics survery, even on those pages not available for preview.) Again, the data available online is incomplete, but as Professor Glenn is now a contributor to the Cato Institute's blog, one wonders if he stands by his 1977 conclusion. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/01/21/norval-d-glenn/against-family-fatalism/
On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 7:39 AM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > On Apr 4, 2011, at 10:16 AM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 9:04 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >> But this is really heartening - because people don't get more
> > conservative
> > >> as they age.
> > >
> > > What's the data on this?
> >
> > See pp. 20-21 of this:
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2010/06/pdf/voter_demographics.pdf
> >
> > Doug
> >
> >
> Thanks.
>
> j
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>