bobbyw24
07-26-2010, 05:13 AM
The Gray And The Brown: The Generational Mismatch
A contrast in priorities is arising between nonwhite young voters and white, older voters.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
by Ronald Brownstein
In an age of diminished resources, the United States may be heading for an intensifying confrontation between the gray and the brown.
Two of the biggest demographic trends reshaping the nation in the 21st century increasingly appear to be on a collision course that could rattle American politics for decades. From one direction, racial diversity in the United States is growing, particularly among the young. Minorities now make up more than two-fifths of all children under 18, and they will represent a majority of all American children by as soon as 2023, demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution predicts.
At the same time, the country is also aging, as the massive Baby Boom Generation moves into retirement. But in contrast to the young, fully four-fifths of this rapidly expanding senior population is white. That proportion will decline only slowly over the coming decades, Frey says, with whites still representing nearly two-thirds of seniors by 2040.
These twin developments are creating what could be called a generational mismatch, or a "cultural generation gap" as Frey labels it. A contrast in needs, attitudes, and priorities is arising between a heavily (and soon majority) nonwhite population of young people and an overwhelmingly white cohort of older people. Like tectonic plates, these slow-moving but irreversible forces may generate enormous turbulence as they grind against each other in the years ahead.
Already, some observers see the tension between the older white and younger nonwhite populations in disputes as varied as Arizona's controversial immigration law and a California lawsuit that successfully blocked teacher layoffs this year at predominantly minority schools. The 2008 election presented another angle on this dynamic, with young people (especially minorities) strongly preferring Democrat Barack Obama, and seniors (especially whites) breaking solidly for Republican John McCain.
Over time, the major focus in this struggle is likely to be the tension between an aging white population that appears increasingly resistant to taxes and dubious of public spending, and a minority population that overwhelmingly views government education, health, and social-welfare programs as the best ladder of opportunity for its children. "Anything to do with children in the public arena is going to generate a stark competition for resources," Frey says.
The twist is that graying white voters who are skeptical of public spending may have more in common with the young minorities clamoring for it than either side now recognizes. Today's minority students will represent an increasing share of tomorrow's workforce and thus pay more of the payroll taxes that will be required to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits for the mostly white Baby Boomers. Many analysts warn that if the U.S. doesn't improve educational performance among African-American and Hispanic children, who now lag badly behind whites in both high school and college graduation rates, the nation will have difficulty producing enough high-paying jobs to generate the tax revenue to maintain a robust retirement safety net.
"The future of America is in this question: Will the Baby Boomers recognize that they have a responsibility and a personal stake in ensuring that this next generation of largely Latino and African-American kids are prepared to succeed?" contends Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University in Houston, who has studied the economic and political implications of changing demographics. "This ethnic transformation could be the greatest asset this county will have, with a young multilingual, well-educated workforce. Or it could tear us apart and become a major liability."
Competition For Taxpayer Dollars
Although cultural disputes often generate the most heat, government budgets are likely to become the central point of conflict between younger minorities and older whites. At the state level, where governors are grappling with persistent deficits, the strains revolve around the choice between raising taxes or cutting spending. At the national level, Congress faces not only that familiar debate but also the competition between investing in education and other programs that benefit children, or spending on those that benefit seniors, primarily Medicare and Social Security.
The entire white electorate has grown more skeptical about the value of public spending and the ability of government to solve problems even as Washington, first under President Bush and now under Obama, has undertaken a series of almost unprecedented interventions to revive the weakened economy. That skepticism is especially intense among older white Americans. In a Pew Research Center survey this spring, just 23 percent of white seniors said they preferred a larger government that offers more services; 61 percent preferred a smaller government that offers fewer services. Among minorities, the attitude was essentially reversed: 62 percent preferred a larger government and 28 percent a smaller one.
In the states, these contrasting attitudes complicate the struggle to close massive budget deficits. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, recently calculated that the combined, cumulative shortfall facing state governments -- even after adding in federal aid from the 2009 stimulus -- increased from $71 billion in 2009 to $137 billion this year and is projected to rise to $144 billion next year.
To some extent, states wrestle with the decision of whether to slice programs for seniors (such as home health care or other services provided under Medicaid), of those that help children (such as K-12 and higher education, or public health programs for the uninsured). But to a larger extent at the state level, the real choice pits all spending against tax increases.
These debates don't always follow racial lines. In Arizona, voters this spring approved a three-year sales tax increase that Brewer touted as the only option to avoid even deeper cuts in education and public safety than the state had already approved to close a budget shortfall. "That argument resonated with everybody," said David Liebowitz, a public-relations consultant who worked on the campaign supporting the increase. "Ironically, our internal polling showed a lot of the support came from senior citizens and older people, which flew in the face of what we generally understand to be true about older folks and tax increases."
But in many state budget disputes, racial dimensions are not far below the surface. Typically, Republican legislators and governors, most of whom rely primarily on the votes of whites, prefer to close the gaps principally (if not exclusively) by cutting spending, rather than raising taxes. Democrats, who rely more heavily on the votes of minorities, and include more minority legislators in their caucuses, typically prefer to buffer spending cuts by pairing them with tax increases. Even in Arizona, notes Bruce Hernandez, research director of the Behavior Research Center, the "willingness to fund [public programs] has been much stronger within the Hispanic community" than among whites, many of whom "want roads and that's about it."
California's massive and persistent budget shortfalls have forced these issues into particularly sharp relief. As in other states, neither side in the argument has seen much benefit in highlighting the racial connotations of the budget choices.
In a state where minorities represent fully 70 percent of residents under 18, however, those implications are not difficult to discern. Policy makers are grappling with education cutbacks that have left elementary and secondary schools with $17 billion less than they expected over the past two years; tuition increases greater than 30 percent at state colleges and universities over the same period; and proposals from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce spending on day care and food assistance while raising costs for families receiving public health care. "It's hitting poor kids and kids of color by far the most severely," said Ted Lempert, president of the advocacy group Children Now.
The racial dimension of the budget crisis became unusually visible this spring when the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other groups sued the Los Angeles Unified School District over layoffs at three middle schools in which most of the students are minorities. In California, as in many states, the least experienced teachers are often assigned to heavily minority schools, which are typically considered the least desirable; state law requires administrators to first lay off teachers with the least seniority. The result was that nearly half of the teachers in two of the schools and nearly three-fourths in the third lost their jobs last year, forcing students to cycle through a parade of substitute teachers. In May, the Los Angeles Superior Court blocked further layoffs at the schools.
Mark Rosenbaum, the Southern California ACLU's chief counsel, maintains that the school district would not be making such cuts if the school-age population had not tilted so sharply toward minorities. "That's part and parcel of what is going on," he says. "This would not be happening to the same degree if it were not families of color and low-income families that are suffering the most."
Political Implications
more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20100724_3946.php
A contrast in priorities is arising between nonwhite young voters and white, older voters.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
by Ronald Brownstein
In an age of diminished resources, the United States may be heading for an intensifying confrontation between the gray and the brown.
Two of the biggest demographic trends reshaping the nation in the 21st century increasingly appear to be on a collision course that could rattle American politics for decades. From one direction, racial diversity in the United States is growing, particularly among the young. Minorities now make up more than two-fifths of all children under 18, and they will represent a majority of all American children by as soon as 2023, demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution predicts.
At the same time, the country is also aging, as the massive Baby Boom Generation moves into retirement. But in contrast to the young, fully four-fifths of this rapidly expanding senior population is white. That proportion will decline only slowly over the coming decades, Frey says, with whites still representing nearly two-thirds of seniors by 2040.
These twin developments are creating what could be called a generational mismatch, or a "cultural generation gap" as Frey labels it. A contrast in needs, attitudes, and priorities is arising between a heavily (and soon majority) nonwhite population of young people and an overwhelmingly white cohort of older people. Like tectonic plates, these slow-moving but irreversible forces may generate enormous turbulence as they grind against each other in the years ahead.
Already, some observers see the tension between the older white and younger nonwhite populations in disputes as varied as Arizona's controversial immigration law and a California lawsuit that successfully blocked teacher layoffs this year at predominantly minority schools. The 2008 election presented another angle on this dynamic, with young people (especially minorities) strongly preferring Democrat Barack Obama, and seniors (especially whites) breaking solidly for Republican John McCain.
Over time, the major focus in this struggle is likely to be the tension between an aging white population that appears increasingly resistant to taxes and dubious of public spending, and a minority population that overwhelmingly views government education, health, and social-welfare programs as the best ladder of opportunity for its children. "Anything to do with children in the public arena is going to generate a stark competition for resources," Frey says.
The twist is that graying white voters who are skeptical of public spending may have more in common with the young minorities clamoring for it than either side now recognizes. Today's minority students will represent an increasing share of tomorrow's workforce and thus pay more of the payroll taxes that will be required to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits for the mostly white Baby Boomers. Many analysts warn that if the U.S. doesn't improve educational performance among African-American and Hispanic children, who now lag badly behind whites in both high school and college graduation rates, the nation will have difficulty producing enough high-paying jobs to generate the tax revenue to maintain a robust retirement safety net.
"The future of America is in this question: Will the Baby Boomers recognize that they have a responsibility and a personal stake in ensuring that this next generation of largely Latino and African-American kids are prepared to succeed?" contends Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University in Houston, who has studied the economic and political implications of changing demographics. "This ethnic transformation could be the greatest asset this county will have, with a young multilingual, well-educated workforce. Or it could tear us apart and become a major liability."
Competition For Taxpayer Dollars
Although cultural disputes often generate the most heat, government budgets are likely to become the central point of conflict between younger minorities and older whites. At the state level, where governors are grappling with persistent deficits, the strains revolve around the choice between raising taxes or cutting spending. At the national level, Congress faces not only that familiar debate but also the competition between investing in education and other programs that benefit children, or spending on those that benefit seniors, primarily Medicare and Social Security.
The entire white electorate has grown more skeptical about the value of public spending and the ability of government to solve problems even as Washington, first under President Bush and now under Obama, has undertaken a series of almost unprecedented interventions to revive the weakened economy. That skepticism is especially intense among older white Americans. In a Pew Research Center survey this spring, just 23 percent of white seniors said they preferred a larger government that offers more services; 61 percent preferred a smaller government that offers fewer services. Among minorities, the attitude was essentially reversed: 62 percent preferred a larger government and 28 percent a smaller one.
In the states, these contrasting attitudes complicate the struggle to close massive budget deficits. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, recently calculated that the combined, cumulative shortfall facing state governments -- even after adding in federal aid from the 2009 stimulus -- increased from $71 billion in 2009 to $137 billion this year and is projected to rise to $144 billion next year.
To some extent, states wrestle with the decision of whether to slice programs for seniors (such as home health care or other services provided under Medicaid), of those that help children (such as K-12 and higher education, or public health programs for the uninsured). But to a larger extent at the state level, the real choice pits all spending against tax increases.
These debates don't always follow racial lines. In Arizona, voters this spring approved a three-year sales tax increase that Brewer touted as the only option to avoid even deeper cuts in education and public safety than the state had already approved to close a budget shortfall. "That argument resonated with everybody," said David Liebowitz, a public-relations consultant who worked on the campaign supporting the increase. "Ironically, our internal polling showed a lot of the support came from senior citizens and older people, which flew in the face of what we generally understand to be true about older folks and tax increases."
But in many state budget disputes, racial dimensions are not far below the surface. Typically, Republican legislators and governors, most of whom rely primarily on the votes of whites, prefer to close the gaps principally (if not exclusively) by cutting spending, rather than raising taxes. Democrats, who rely more heavily on the votes of minorities, and include more minority legislators in their caucuses, typically prefer to buffer spending cuts by pairing them with tax increases. Even in Arizona, notes Bruce Hernandez, research director of the Behavior Research Center, the "willingness to fund [public programs] has been much stronger within the Hispanic community" than among whites, many of whom "want roads and that's about it."
California's massive and persistent budget shortfalls have forced these issues into particularly sharp relief. As in other states, neither side in the argument has seen much benefit in highlighting the racial connotations of the budget choices.
In a state where minorities represent fully 70 percent of residents under 18, however, those implications are not difficult to discern. Policy makers are grappling with education cutbacks that have left elementary and secondary schools with $17 billion less than they expected over the past two years; tuition increases greater than 30 percent at state colleges and universities over the same period; and proposals from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce spending on day care and food assistance while raising costs for families receiving public health care. "It's hitting poor kids and kids of color by far the most severely," said Ted Lempert, president of the advocacy group Children Now.
The racial dimension of the budget crisis became unusually visible this spring when the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other groups sued the Los Angeles Unified School District over layoffs at three middle schools in which most of the students are minorities. In California, as in many states, the least experienced teachers are often assigned to heavily minority schools, which are typically considered the least desirable; state law requires administrators to first lay off teachers with the least seniority. The result was that nearly half of the teachers in two of the schools and nearly three-fourths in the third lost their jobs last year, forcing students to cycle through a parade of substitute teachers. In May, the Los Angeles Superior Court blocked further layoffs at the schools.
Mark Rosenbaum, the Southern California ACLU's chief counsel, maintains that the school district would not be making such cuts if the school-age population had not tilted so sharply toward minorities. "That's part and parcel of what is going on," he says. "This would not be happening to the same degree if it were not families of color and low-income families that are suffering the most."
Political Implications
more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20100724_3946.php