The Economist has an interesting article (focused on UK politics), which suggests that the answer is yes. I’m less sure, but the article is full of interesting tidbits. Here’s how it begins:
Clive thinks immigration has overwhelmed the health service. Pat says her town is swamped by new housing. Elizabeth voted for Brexit, but doesn’t want a trade deal with America, “especially the pharmaceutical side of it, Trump and his chickens.” So did Kathleen, but she now thinks a no-deal exit will mean shortages of groceries and medicines. “I’m prepared to do without stuff,” she says.
They are part of a focus group organised by NatCen, a social-research institute, studying “affluent eurosceptics”, a Conservative-leaning middle-class tribe. Nearly half the group is over retirement age. They lament their children’s europhilia, their grandchildren’s idleness and the decline of Britain’s industrial prowess. Yet the thread that links their views is a preference for policies that harm growth, and an aversion to those which boost it. . . .
Onward, a think-tank close to the government, reported last year that the old are especially hostile to the “drivers of prosperity in the modern liberal market economy”. They are more likely to agree with statements such as “globalisation has not benefited most people”, “jobs and wages have been made worse by technological change” and “more people living in cities has made society worse.”
On the other side, younger voters tend to be more supportive of socialism, which in my view is a profoundly anti-progress ideology. Nonetheless, it is striking how older voters have recently shifted on a wide range of issues. They’ve probably always been more reactionary on social issues such as interracial marriage, gay rights and drug legalization. But they have also become more skeptical of trade and immigration, and more hostile to building new housing. Some of this reflects the fact that Nimby policies disproportionately hurt younger voters.
In the UK, older voters favor spending on health care (and pensions) over education. According to The Economist, they seem to have had their way, as spending on health care has risen from 6% to 7% of GDP while spending on education fell from 6% to 4% of GDP. I’m actually not convinced that public education does much to spur growth, but I’m almost certain that additional spending on health care doesn’t boost growth.
Leadership in the UK’s Conservative Party seems more pro-growth than the rank and file. Recall that Brexit was sold as a way of making the UK a sort of Singaporean free trading nation. That doesn’t seem to be happening:
Mr Johnson’s plan to offset the costs of Brexit by making Britain a nimbler, globetrotting place is not popular among the old. A trade deal with America will require loosening food regulations, to which pensioners are particularly hostile. Mr Johnson calls himself a Sinophile, but his mps have pushed him into banning Huawei, a telecoms company, from Britain’s fifth-generation (5g) mobile network on security grounds. Older voters, unlike the young, overwhelmingly support the move even if it harms trade with Beijing.
Prime Minister Johnson also seems to have lost out on the housing front:
Mr Johnson’s reforms to the planning system, announced on August 6th, might have threatened their back gardens, but concessions to nimbies ensure that the green belt, which prevents prosperous towns and cities from expanding, remains protected.
In America, the GOP recently bowed to reality, and switched from being an anti-zoning party (at the national level) to a pro-zoning party.
As populations age all over the world, we can expect an increasingly geriatric politics:
Increasingly, Britain is governed in the interests of voters with an insatiable demand for health care and pensions, while a sluggish economy struggles to fund them. But it would take a brave Tory to make the grey voter pay more tax. “Everything I’ve got I’ve earned,” says Kathleen. “The generation under me just seems to expect everything to be given to them.”
That last comment reminds me of amusing signs at Tea Party rallies:
READER COMMENTS
foosion
Aug 21 2020 at 1:05pm
Is it ‘“affluent eurosceptics”, a Conservative-leaning middle-class tribe’ rather than the old as such who are opposed?
And get off my lawn!
Scott Sumner
Aug 21 2020 at 2:17pm
If you read the entire article it’s clear that the views I discuss are held disproportionately by older UK voters.
Capt. J Parker
Aug 21 2020 at 2:01pm
Older voters favor pensions and healthcare spending. Imagine that! And somehow, according the The Economist, this means there is some kind of problem with older voters? Scheesh. If there is a problem here it is that Socialist leaning politicians made a bunch of promises regarding publicly funded pensions and healthcare years ago and people took them at their word. Now they expect those promises to be kept.
If this means that pro growth policies like education spending get cut that just goes to prove Dr. Sumners point:
The “more government is always better” crowd would rather just forget about those past promises and make a bunch of new promises to a generation that has yet to realize what H.L. Mencken said:
Scott Sumner
Aug 21 2020 at 2:18pm
You said:
“Older voters favor pensions and healthcare spending. Imagine that! And somehow, according the The Economist, this means there is some kind of problem with older voters? “
I don’t follow this. Why shouldn’t the Economist think there’s a problem with older voters if those voters support public policies that the Economist doesn’t?
Capt. J Parker
Aug 21 2020 at 10:26pm
It’s my belief that The Economist favors more public funding of healthcare. If I’m correct then I should be justified in saying “Hey The Economist, you guys were cheerleading for this entitlement, now you are going to blame older voters for expecting government to actually deliver on the progressive utopia the politicians promised? Have you guys never heard of self interest?”
Even if I am wrong and The Economist favors privatization, how is it that the blame falls on the voters? UK and US voters who are now near or into retirement have know nothing other than major government involvement in elder healthcare, dropped on their heads by long dead progressive politicians. Again, the self-interest of today’s older voters is something any fool could have forseen. If it is a problem then blame the thieves who designed the system. If The Economist is really interested in not repeating past entitlement mistakes (and I doubt they are, they just favor more taxing and spending) then they should be railing against politicians buying votes with promises of handouts, carefully designed so that the bills for them don’t come due for a generation, and not complaining about the poor schmucks just trying to make their way in the world as best they can.
Scott Sumner
Aug 22 2020 at 2:02pm
The specific person who wrote the article clearly doesn’t think it’s a good idea that spending on education fell as a share of GDP while spending on health care rose.
Philo
Aug 22 2020 at 11:27am
I think Capt. J. Parker’s view is that voters–by what is practically a Law of Nature–vote to promote their self-interest; it is useless to deplore such behavior, no matter what the age of the voters. Democratic government is supposed to produce a sort of compromise among these conflicting interests.
Scott Sumner
Aug 22 2020 at 2:04pm
If everyone votes based on self interest (and I do not, so that claim is false) then there’s basically no hope for society. No society can be successful without at least some civic virtue.
Mark Z
Aug 23 2020 at 1:47am
A weaker version of this hypothesis – that perceived self-interest significantly influences voting behavior – is probably true though. It’s the best explanation for why the AARP and similar groups fight attempts to stall the rate at which social security benefits grow, and why young, recent college graduates are much more likely to favor college debt forgiveness.
Perhaps old people have less of a reason to care about long term economic growth, but I suspect it’s more that they don’t believe their preferred policies hurt growth. Or economic growth doesn’t factor much into their considerations at all, which I think is the case for a lot of voters in every age cohort.
Phil H
Aug 23 2020 at 12:09pm
Ooh, I don’t agree with this at all!
Quite the contrary: my view of voting has always been that we are precisely asked to vote in our own interest. That way, voting becomes an effective feedback mechanism, inserting into government institutions information about what policies are in the interest of the most people.
If we don’t vote on our own interests, then that signal is surely muddled.
Capt. J Parker
Aug 23 2020 at 10:41pm
This implies that the only outlet we have to demonstrate civic virtue is through our choices on election day. This is totally wrong.
I always vote for my own self interest. To do otherwise would surely be to vote for government’s self interest and exceedingly rarely in the interest of my fellow citizens.
Jose Pablo
Aug 24 2020 at 8:44pm
Voters don´t vote to promote their self-interest. I think Caplan did a good job showing this in “The Myth of the Rational Voter”.
They vote looking for a free “feel good” experience and to be “part of a group”, something psychologically very rewarding to any human being.
Actually, it is impossible to link any political action to any specific economic outcome relevant to the voter, even if you are the most skillful designer of general equilibrium models (i.e., poor Venezuelan Hugo Chavez voters could have though it would be on their own interest to vote for him, with hindsight though …).
A politician wants to raise the minimum wage. You are a minimum wage voter. Is in your own interest to vote for him and risk your job disappearing? Even brilliant trained economist can´t tell. Actually, they are pretty much divided 50/50 on this topic.
A politician wants to keep “sending checks” to people. Should you vote for him to keep the checks coming your way and risk having out of control inflation (either in your groceries or the house you want to buy or both). Are you going to be part of the ones paying for the party in 5 years time? Even brilliant trained economist can´t tell.
Salem
Aug 21 2020 at 3:05pm
We’ll have to see how they shake out in practice, but the planning reforms, at this stage, are massively pro-growth. NIMBYism is a big deal, but perhaps more serious is that councils can basically extort developers through the planning system. Not allowing more development on the green belt is no big deal. The reason there’s so much pressure on the green belt right now is because development closer to the centres, where people want to be, is so difficult. Allow that development, and the issue largely goes away.
Would it be even better if all areas were zoned as “growth” and the green belt abolished? Sure. But if the reforms go through as they are, this is a much bigger deal than all of the negatives put together.
Scott Sumner
Aug 21 2020 at 5:15pm
Thanks for that info.
Michael Pettengill
Aug 23 2020 at 3:06am
Are developers lured by higher prices/rents paid for new housing over existing housing which most people oppose paying, or are developers lured by charging lower prices/rents which will force down prices/rents on old housing which should be inferior quality to new modern housing which will harm the older owners of existing housing?
Josh
Aug 21 2020 at 3:10pm
Every generation prefers policies that benefit its members at their current stage of life (eg boomers are big on health care; millennials want “free” college; etc). A lot of the time, these tend to cancel as the generations form coalitions.
I suspect one problem right now is that the boomer generation has been so large and powerful, that for the last 40 years they’ve been able to basically get everything they want. They haven’t really had to compromise (we’ll have had a boomer president for at least 32 consecutive years, when the generation itself only lasted <20).
Health care spending has risen along with the boomer generation’s consumption. NIMBY and related regs that protect the value of boomer assets has risen. College spending – which is paid by Gen X parents to educate Millenial kids and received by education establishments that are managed and taught by-and-large by boomers – has risen (much of this is due to government policy).
Now this article showing how the skepticism of change that sets in with age is becoming law throughout the developed world.
I think having one generation be so large relative to the surrounding generations has been a huge problem.
Scott Sumner
Aug 21 2020 at 5:18pm
Josh, The aging of the population is likely to permanently skew the electorate toward older voters. Their share of the voting age population will be even higher in 15 years.
(BTW, I don’t believe Biden is a boomer.)
robc
Aug 21 2020 at 4:37pm
As someone who is still anti-zoning, are you saying I am out of touch with reality? I would say that I am in touch with property rights.
Scott Sumner
Aug 21 2020 at 5:19pm
Yes, I should have said political reality. I’m also still anti-zoning.
Aladin
Aug 22 2020 at 8:38am
Been to the UK a few times, never very long, but my understanding of the green belt issue is that it is basically the NY equivalent of Central Park. At least that’s how its been explained to be. Sure, developing on it would encourage a lot of growth, but we don’t develop on it because people like some semblance of nature and its good for them.
That may be wrong, but from that perspective protecting it seems to be reasonable. Its a matter of preferences.
And they aren’t wrong to want to preserve existing structures as much as possible … when your 70, the cost of change is much higher than if you are 20, and the benefits are much lower since you don’t have too long to live. Its not great to younger populations, but this is a general problem.
It only manifests itself now because well, social change has accelerated (accepting that change has costs), technological change has decelerate (benefits of change and thus perceived to be negative), and birth rates have decreased giving the old much more power than before and more relevance.
This is combined with a media system that gives the constant impression the world is falling and is decidedly in favor of freaking people out instead of reassuring them when it actually is. This is less of a problem in the UK than US, but still.
Wasn’t there a study that said that radio had a polarizing effect in Germany, but TV had a neutralizing effect? Modern media more resembles radio than TV. Many disparate voices, no uniting factor.
Aladin
Aug 22 2020 at 9:00am
And everyone is way to focused on national races … the local democrats in my state resemble the far left progressives and the local Republicans resemble moderate 90s Republicans …. I should probably vote republican locally given those terms right? Like to defend property rights, much of which happens locally, Republicans are best suited to it. Regardless of whatever Trump thinks.
You are allowed to vote against Trump and national Republicans but in favor of local politicians, or vice versa, or whatever combination you like.
Saying Trump doesn’t believe in property rights so the GOP has abandoned it is a bit of a stretch.
In any event, the policy that has probably affected my life the most, aside from stuff that happened over Covid, where everyone is blame worthy, is the plastic bag ban my state instituted, so the overriding issue is if you voted for that your out.
I thats fair.
Rajat
Aug 22 2020 at 9:52pm
I think there’s a lot of confusion more generally these days around what terms like ‘progress’ and ‘growth’ even mean. Is it GDP, GDP per capita, productivity, jobs or something broader ? Relaxing zoning and cutting corporate income taxes may increase all of them, but politicians and the media often refer to one or the other at various times. Australia has embarked on a massive expansion of health & welfare spending through the National Disability Insurance Scheme, to improve the lives of people with permanent disabilities. Apart from helping the beneficiaries, more health spending visibly creates jobs, often reasonably well-paying jobs that young people want to do. So how to tell an older person that supporting health spending is not supporting progress and growth?
More spending on, say, basic research, may increase productivity, but creates few immediate jobs. Labour market deregulation may create jobs, and overall GDP, but may reduce GDP per hour worked and measured average wages. Climate change policies may create some visible jobs (eg renewable subsidies), but increase energy costs and reduce GDP growth (certainly for a small country). It becomes easy for vested interests to push policies intended to advance their own vision of progress. In Australia, the term ‘reform’ was used in the 1980s and 90s to mean pro-market changes. These were initially unpopular, but became popular subsequently as voters say the payoff. Now ‘reform’ has been co-opted by every vested interest group in the same was that the term ‘investment’ now just means more spending.
Scott Sumner
Aug 23 2020 at 11:55am
Good points
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