The growing tide of support for government intervention by generation

I’ve just been looking at some Pew Research figures regarding generational attitudes towards the size of government. It would seem – on the basis of very preliminary evidence- that the electorate is going to get more supportive of big government over time. Each generation believes there is a greater scope for government intervention more than the one before it. This might, on its own, not be very interesting. Older people are more conservative right? So one day millennials will age out of their youthful support for government intervention yeah?

Except, in the main, it doesn’t look like the generations are getting more conservative with time on this question. In the main, each generation starts off more supportive of government intervention than the generation before it, and remains that way or even gets more progressive over time. The only big counter example is millennials between 2007 and 2011.

Data is based on Pew research. There’s a change of question in 2018, but it shouldn’t affect the ordering or the general picture that emerges.

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References:

See: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/2-views-of-scope-of-government-trust-in-government-economic-inequality/

And: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/01/17/generation-z-looks-a-lot-like-millennials-on-key-social-and-political-issues/