Young adults worry about the same issues that are uppermost in the minds of Americans everywhere, but their average degree of concern about these issues is not necessarily the same as in other age groups. When given a list of issues and asked how much they worry about each one, the largest percentages of 18- and 29-year-olds said they worry "a great deal" about "the possibility of future terrorist attacks in the U.S." (56%), "the availability and affordability of healthcare" (52%), and "crime and violence" (50%). Among American adults overall, the healthcare issue topped the list at 55%*.
Adults in this youngest age bracket were born between 1974 and 1985, into an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. Even the eldest of this group, those born just after the Vietnam War and during the deep recessions of the mid-1970s, came of age during the relatively peaceful and economically booming years of the 1980s and 1990s. There was a short economic recession in the early 1990s and the brief Gulf War in 1991 -- but compared to the Vietnam War and the civil rights turmoil faced by those who came of age in the 1960s, these were ripples in a sea of relative tranquility. Then in 2001 came the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Shocked out of complacency, it's not surprising that in the years since Sept. 11, a large percentage of young adults have expressed concern about terrorism. But it is interesting to note that their level of worry does not seem to be subsiding. In fact, worry about possible future terrorist attacks rose by 10 percentage points this year among 18- to 29-year-olds, from 51% in 2002, to 61% in 2003, while concerns about terrorism either stayed the same or dropped in all other age categories.
Healthcare
Like older adults, more than half of young American adults say they are personally worried about the availability and affordability of healthcare. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2001 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), an estimated 14.6% of the population, 41.2 million Americans, had no health insurance coverage. A great many of those without medical insurance are likely to be the newest members of the workforce, those often subjected to the "last hired, first fired" policy of many organizations. In fact, the Census Bureau writes in its newsletter, "Young adults (18 to 24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2001."
Although healthcare ranks as the second greatest concern for young adults among the issues tested, it should be noted that Americans between the ages of 30 and 64 express even greater concern about this issue.
Crime and Violence
After nearly a decade of falling crime rates, it's not surprising that the youngest Americans took notice of the first upswing in their adult lives. Half of the young adult groups (50%) say they worry about "crime and violence," a percentage slightly higher than the other age groups'. The Nation's Crime Index, measured by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, shows that the overall crime rate rose 2.1% in 2001. According to the 2002 Preliminary UCR Report, released last month, the Crime Index has fallen slightly by 0.2%, but that may provide little solace for those who have been used to dramatically decreasing crime rates throughout much of the previous decade.
Young adults diverge most from their older counterparts when it comes to concern about the environment, unemployment, and drug use.
Forty-three percent of young Americans worry about the environment, compared to the national average of 35%. However, young adults are no more or less concerned about the "availability and affordability of energy" than those in other age groups. Most young adults grew up in a renewed wave of environmentalism in the late 1980s-early 1990s, in a world in which community recycling is the norm and international treaties on global environmental issues have been reached.
Those in the 18- to 29-year-old age category are significantly more likely to worry about unemployment than are older Americans. Forty-one percent of young adults express a great deal of worry about unemployment, compared to 35% of those between the ages of 30 and 49 and just 30% of those age 50 and older. This higher degree of anxiety may result from the fact that many recent college graduates -- with limited job experience -- are entering the toughest job market in at least a decade.
Young adults are a great deal less concerned about drug use than are older adults. The "war on drugs" in the 1980s is a distant memory now to many adults, and a term with which many young adults may not be familiar. Drug use and terrorism are among the two greatest concerns of older Americans. It is unclear if this higher degree of concern among older Americans is related to the problem of illicit drugs in society, or possibly to Americans' great reliance on prescribed drugs.
Bottom Line
Those in the middle of this young age group have also been labeled the "Millennial Generation," since they came of age more or less around the turn of the century. Neil Howe and William Strauss write in their 2000 book, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, "As a group, millennials are unlike any other youth generation in living memory. They are more numerous, more affluent, better educated, and more ethnically diverse." Perhaps if Howe and Strauss were writing that book today, they might add that millennials are also struggling to understand a world suddenly very different from the one in which they grew up.
*Aggregated results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selection national sample of 1,007 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 4-7, 2002, and of 1,008 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted March 24-25, 2003. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effect is ±3%.
