UC Berkeley

Political scientists often use the lens of generations when studying how the political views of citizens develop and how the polity as a whole evolves. This essay provides an overview of the topic: distinguishing work on lineage generations from that on political generations while also addressing their intersection; describing the Age-Period-Cohort (APC) framework used to study political generations and illustrating the difficulty of distinguishing cohort from age and period effects; and reflecting on the difficulty of explaining generational differences. The essay closes with a discussion of the many ways in which America's youngest citizens are politically different from their elders.