The beliefs and behavior of Americans—from political convictions to sexual mores—have changed dramatically in the past several decades. It is often surmised that the attitudes and ideas of a younger generation are displacing those of their parents and grandparents. The reality is more complex.
References
1.
AlwinDuane F.“The Political Impact of the Baby Boom: Are There Persistent Generational Differences in Political Beliefs and Behavior?”Generations22 (Spring 1998): 46–54. Uses the National Election Studies to document cohort change in political beliefs and behavior over the past 50 years.
2.
AlwinDuane F.McCammonRyan J.. “Generations, Cohorts, and Social Change.” In Handbook on the Life Course, edited by MortimerJeylanShanahanMichael. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002. A recent detailed review of the scholarly literature on stability and change of individuals, cohorts and society from the perspective of life course theory.
3.
DavisJames A.“Patterns of attitude change in the USA: 1972–1994.” In Understanding Change in Social Attitudes, edited by TaylorB.ThomsonK.BrookfieldV T: Dartmouth, 1996. The most exhaustive empirical examination of cohort effects and intra-cohort change on social attitudes and beliefs.
4.
EriksonErik H.“Youth: Fidelity and Diversity.”Daedalus117 (1988): 1–24. A classic statement on the dilemmas and opportunities of youth.
5.
MannheimKarl. “The Problem of Generations.” In Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge; edited by KecskemetiP.. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952. (Original work published in 1927). A modern classic which examines the concept of generation and generational replacement.
6.
MasonWilliam M.FienbergStephen E.. Cohort Analysis in Social Research: Beyond the Identification Problem.New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985. A standard reference on the difficulties of drawing inferences about cohort effects in repeated cross-sectional research designs.
7.
PutnamRobert D.Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Argues on the basis of massive amounts of data that individual differences in social connectedness and trust depend heavily on cohort placement.
8.
RyderNorman B.“The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change.”American Sociological Review30 (December 1965): 843–61. A carefully crafted demographer's perspective on the concept of cohort in understanding social change.
