Posted on 11/02/2019 10:48:06 PM PDT by Cronos
The EU was set up in response to the horrors and destruction of the Second World War. In the wake of the Brexit referendum result, it was oft repeated that the older generations were more likely to have voted for Britain to leave the European Union. This presents something of a puzzle; why would older generations, likely to have experienced the impact of the war first-hand, seek to remove Britain from an institution that has helped maintain peace in Europe for more than seven decades? Might it be that the ‘over 65s’ category, containing individuals several decades apart in age, conceals distinct generational differences amongst this group?
To address these questions, I have conducted an Age-Period-Cohort (APC) analysis using Eurobarometer survey data. APC analysis is used to ascertain if distinct generational effects are present in public opinion. Generational effects refer to the influence of environmental factors during each generation’s formative period (approximately between ages 15-25) on their long term political opinions, such as the prevailing social attitudes of the time or the occurrence of important political events. The Second World War is undoubtedly just such an event that may have deeply influenced the opinions of the generation that came of age during wartime.
This APC analysis used a longitudinal dataset of Eurobarometer surveys covering the years 1970-2017. These biannual surveys, consisting of 1,000 face-to-face interviews with members of the British public, ask respondents a range of questions, including their opinions on European integration. When controlling for a range of factors that have been identified as influencing attitudes towards integration – education, occupation, left-right position, gender, urbanisation – generational effects are confirmed in the data.
Specifically, when defining a ‘war generation’ that experienced the majority of their formative period during the Second World War, as well as a number of other more recent generations, this war generation is revealed as displaying significantly more positive views towards European integration than the immediate post-war generations. In fact, the size of this generational effect between the war and post-war generations is approximately equivalent to the same change in attitude that would be expected from a two-year reduction in education levels, a factor well known to increase Euroscepticism.
Holding all values at their mean in the data, Figure 1 illustrates the curvilinear differences in generational attitudes towards the EU in the UK. These results reflect respondents’ answers to questions regarding how positively they view the image of the EU, and whether they rate the UK’s membership of the EU as a good or a bad thing. In these illustrations, higher values connote more negative attitudes towards European integration. They therefore show that, all else being equal, the war generation have more positive attitudes towards the EU than the immediately following generations. Indeed, only the most recent generation, the millennial generation, display more positive attitudes towards the EU than the war generation.
Figure 1: Image of the EU among different generations in the UK
Note: For both charts, a higher value indicates a more negative image of the EU. One explanation for these results is that the war generation give a premium to the pacific benefits of European institutions. Having experienced first-hand the horrors of war, they place a high value on the founding principles of unity that the EU promotes. The most recent generations also view integration more positively, given that these individuals have grown up with the UK’s membership of the EU as the norm. The concept of not being a part of Europe – with its visible signifiers of flags, anthems and institutions – is likely to be discordant to those from the millennial generation. Conversely, the post-war and 60/70s generations in the UK have neither the memories of wartime nor the routinised experiences of EU membership during their formative years. They therefore display the most hostile attitudes towards integration.
Additional variables, not captured in the Eurobarometer Survey data, appear poor alternative explanations for these findings. Reduced urbanisation, increased Protestantism, changes in party affiliation, the spread of communication technologies, and media frames have all been shown in previous research to affect attitudes towards European integration. This previous research, however, would suggest that the historical trends in these factors should lead to a reduction in hostility towards integration from the war to post-war generations. They are not, therefore, likely to be explaining the observed effects.
Including individuals’ responses to other questions in the Eurobarometer survey can more clearly outline the explanatory logics underpinning these results. Mediation analysis was performed on the answers to the question “What does the EU mean to you personally?” in the analysed models. Crucially, one of the 14 multiple choice answers to this question was “Peace”. If the observed effects were operating through the proposed ‘peace hypothesis’, accounting for those answering peace to this question should reduce the observed generational effects.
The results of this analysis confirm that this is the case: the older generations are more likely to associate the EU with bringing peace, and when mediating for these attitudes, the generational effects in the initial models are reduced by around 20%. The war generation are more likely to associate the EU with peace, and thus have more positive attitudes towards integration.
However, this analysis also reveals additional elements that are driving the cohort effects between the war and the following generations. Indeed, the post-war generation are in fact more likely to associate the EU with bringing peace than their younger counterparts, and yet they display more negative overall attitudes towards integration.
Conducting additional mediation analysis on alternative answers to the question of “EU meaning” reveals the importance of issues surrounding immigration and sovereignty to the post-war and 60s/70s generations. Almost 22% of the cohort effects are described by the post-war generation as being far more likely to associate the EU with a loss of control of the nations’ borders and a threat to national identity. Similarly, 45% is mediated by concerns surrounding a lack of the effective democratic functioning of the EU, something that has been linked in previous research to notions of an ‘anti-democratic’ EU eroding British sovereignty. It is thus not simply the scarring effects of wartime explaining the war generation’s positivity towards integration, but rather that the two following generations are also particularly hostile to European institutions.
Explanations for these results can be found in British history; the post-war and 60s/70s generations were the first to confront the fall of empire during their formative years, as well as the first mass immigration from the Commonwealth. This fuelled insecurities over British identity, coming to the fore in such instances as Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood Speech” and the Immigration Acts of the 1960s. These results therefore support the notion that it is during times when identities are threatened that they become mobilised as points of political salience, and that these heightened political environments can shape individuals’ opinions long into the future.
It is about the pensions
Oh Boy..
The Ingsoc generation.
The absolute youngest of the Brits born during WW2 would be 74. Elderly folks are more likely to get their news from (and trust) mainstream media. The mainstream British media has been scaremongering about Brexit for 3+ years. Of course, that’s going to influence the geezers’ opinions.
Nope! Flawed data. Most of that wartime coming of age, "Silent Generation", in England are dead, heavily incapacitated, or have borderline dementia. They were conditioned with mores not to speakout, hence the term "Silent Generation." If they are still alive, they depend on National Socialist Healthcare which hampers reasoned thought or expression.
This is more worthless polling.
I would suggest it’s creative-polling (at very best). If you live in the heart of London or any of the dozen-odd urbanized zones in the UK...you are more than likely to be either pro-EU or lean-toward-the-EU. If you live beyond the urbanized zones, you are more than likely to be anti-EU or distrust the whole mechanism.
A fair number of Labour voters will even tell you in a blunt way that the EU is a long-term problem and can’t be trusted. This idea that the whole of the Labour Party wants to remain in the EU...is a joke. But whether they’d go and vote for Johnson or the BREXIT Party is the big unknown.
Why, thank you. That's just about got me covered, though I'm not sure about the first one.
True. But it's the mainstream media, in the form of the Murdoch/Harmsworth/Barclay press, which have been the prime advocates of Brexit from the outset: and these dominate national newspaper sales.
The source for this opinion piece? The London School of Economics and Political Science. Leading the Marxist assault on our young people’s minds for the last fifty years.
The over 85s are pro remain. The 60 to 85s are pro leave
Actually it wasn’t set up for globalism.
Do you actually fit the pre-war demographic or are you just a pensioner like me?
WWII in England started in 1939. To come of age (over 15 years old) according to this would mean someone born in 1924. That would make them 95 years old now or at the latest, 89.
I highly doubt this claim, as I doubt our WWII folks like Japan or Germany as much as our Millennials.
“The Ingsoc generation.”
The same generation who dissolved the British Empire leaving the bulk of it to dictstors and that had food rationing scheme until 10 years after World War II? Those ignorant, useless bastards?
Of course the U.S. umbrella had nothing to do with it.
Mainstream media in the UK has got the Telegraph, Sun and Daily Express as heavily LEAVE.
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