Today’s youth represent conservative culture

The nation’s youth are more conservative than older adults on issues relating to religion and abortion, a study by the University of California, Berkeley, has found.

A report released Sept. 24 by the school’s Survey Research Center found that while 59 percent of adults ages 27 to 59 would like public schools to permit prayer at commencement and other official school activities, 69 percent of teenagers support school prayer.

“We were surprised by the great support among young Americans for some aspects of the conservative cultural agenda,” said Merrill Shanks, a political science professor at the university and a lead researcher of the study. “Young Americans show more conservatism on religious politics and abortion even though youth, as a group, appear to be less likely than their elders to attend religious services regularly or consider religion a guide in their daily life.”

Forty percent of adults ages 27 to 59 support federal funding of faith-based charities, but 59 percent of college-aged respondents and 67 percent of younger teens said they supported such aid.

Younger Americans also seemed to feel more warmly toward religious conservatives than their elders. Asked to rank these groups on a scale from zero for “cold” to 50–100 for varying degrees of “warmth,” 33 percent of youth ages 15 to 26 chose a rating over 50, compared to 26 percent of Americans older than 26.

While 34 percent of respondents older than 26 supported government restrictions on abortion, 44 percent of those ages 15 to 22 and 32 percent of those ages 23 to 26 said they supported such limitations.

Shanks said the study’s results could have implications for future American politics.

“If the youth of today maintain these positions on religious politics and abortion as the years go by, then the American public as a whole could become more conservative on these issues,” he said in a statement.

The report, part of the Survey Research Center’s Public Agendas and Citizen Engagement Survey, is based on interviews of about 1,250 people in 2001. It was funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.