Bad news

The 2009 Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (just a survey, despite the ominous name) has a number of questions on whether people had suffered "adverse childhood experiences."  They were only asked in two states, but since the BRFSS is a very large survey, that still gives a sample of about 10,000.  I'm teaching a class in Social Problems and the topic of child abuse came up, so I decided to look and see what the data said.  My expectation was that things would have improved, but to my surprise I found that younger people were more likely to report having experienced all of the "adverse experiences" (the figures are shown at the end of this post). 

Of course, people were recalling things from years ago, and it's possible that as people get older, they tend to forget bad things about their childhood.  It's also possible that standards have changed--for example, younger generations could certainly have a broader definition of what counts as being "insulted or put down." But there doesn't seem to be much room for forgetting or differences of interpretation in:  "how often did anyone at least 5 years older than you or an adult, force you to have sex?" Another possible explanation for the differences between generations, offered in an article in the "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report," is differential mortality:  if adverse childhood experience increases the risk of death, then people from older generations who suffered them will not be in the sample.  However, from other evidence in the BRFSS, I don't think that the effect on mortality is that large.  So that leaves the unpleasant possibility that these kinds of mistreatment actually became more common over much of the 20th century. 

How to annoy liberals, moderates, and conservatives

For a change, I decided to post information that's not just of academic interest, but can be put to practical use in daily life.  A November 2010 survey by CBS News included an unusual question:  "Which one of the following behaviors do you find the most annoying? 1. People getting onto an elevator before people get off,  2. Spitting in public, 3. Cell phone conversations in restaurants, 4. Driving slow in the fast lane, or 5. The use of the acronym LOL?"  Like most surveys today, it also asked people whether they would describe their political views as liberal, moderate, or conservative.

            Elevator  Spitting  Cell  Driving   LOL   DK/NA

Liberal      10%       29%      22%    27%      5%    7%

Moderate      7%       23%      25%    38%      2%    5%

Conservative  9%       24%      25%    34%      6%    2%

DK/NA         8%       22%      39%    12%     11%    8%

So if you want to annoy a liberal, the best way is to spit in public; if you want to annoy a conservative or moderate, drive slowly in the left lane.  There weren't that many people who didn't choose a political philosophy, but they had a distinctive pattern:  they weren't concerned about driving slowly, but disliked people talking on cell phones in restaurants.  The differences were statistically significant, and remained so after controlling for age and gender (as you might expect, younger people and men were more annoyed by slow drivers, while older people and women were more annoyed by spitting in public). 

An anti-government mood?

A number of writers have recently said that the public is in an "anti-government mood," so it's not inclined to support liberal policies.  When such writers cite surveys, they usually point to a question about whether people "trust the government in Washington to do what is right." The problem is that answers to this question probably reflect feelings about the people making decisions, not about government in general.  That is, a person might distrust "the government in Washington" because it's not taking a more activist role. 

However, there is a more relevant question that's been asked a number of times since 1994, mostly by Pew.  People are asked to choose between "Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient" and "government often does a better job than people give it credit for."  Here is a graph of the percent who choose "wasteful and inefficient":

 

The results for April 2002 seem questionable:  the Roper Center reports that 39% agreed and 51% disagreed, but once in a while they make a mistake, and 51% agreement would be more consistent with the rest of the data.  Regardless of which is the right figure, beliefs about government have become more negative since about 2001, but are less negative than they were in the mid-1990s.

The future of the family

Since 1974, there have been a number of questions asking whether people are optimistic, pessimistic, or uncertain about the future of "the institution of marriage and the family."  The results

      Optimistic  Pessimistic  Uncertain

8/74  57%          19%          19%

8/75  57           20           20

2/77  48           27           22

8/77  52           25           20

2/79  55           22           20

2/81  56           23           19

2/83  58           20           20

3/96  54           27           17

Unfortunately it hasn't been asked since then.  There was a question in October 2010 that was the same except that it didn't offer the "uncertain" option--that produced 67% optimistic and 27% pessimistic.  I would guess that if forced to choose, at least half of the people who chose "uncertain" would have gone for "pessimistic."  However, I have no evidence to support that--it's just my feeling.   If my feeling is correct, the 2010 responses show a move towards optimism.  But on the whole, what strikes me is the stability of opinions during a time when there have been a lot of changes in the family. 

When did everyone start liking Hillary Clinton?

Recently a lot of people have been talking about Hillary Clinton in very flattering terms.  Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen say she is "the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy," and urge Barack Obama to "take the moral high ground" and step aside so she can be the Democratic nominee in 2012.  In the New York Times, Bill Keller thinks that Obama can stay in the top spot, but should make Hillary Clinton his running mate.  After all, she has "a Calvinist work ethic, the stamina of an Olympian, an E.Q. to match her I.Q., and the political instincts of a Clinton" and can bring a "missing warmth" to the campaign.

This seemed strange to me--as I remember, Hillary used to be regarded pretty much like Obama is today:  unquestionably smart, but not very good at connecting with ordinary people.  I don't remember anyone praising her "E.Q." when she led the attempt at health care reform.   Of course, that's just my memory, so I looked for more systematic data.  There have been many questions asking if people had a favorable or unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton, dating back to when Bill was seeking the 1992 Democratic nomination.  In fact, there were so many that I selected only a fraction of them to limit the amount of typing I had to do.  This figure shows the percent with a favorable view minus the percent with an unfavorable view.  For example, in the very first survey to ask about her (February 1992), 26% were favorable and 9% unfavorable, for a +17.

There were three periods when she was very popular--the beginning of the Clinton administration, for most of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, and since the middle of 2008.  In other times, favorable ratings were only slightly more common than unfavorable.  Her first period of popularity was presumably part of the general "honeymoon effect" for a new administration.  The second coincided with the effort to impeach Bill Clinton, when people presumably sympathized with her and thought she handled the situation with class.  The third seems to have started when she conceded the race for the Democratic nomination:  she went from +1 in April 2008 to +12 in June 2008.  Her ratings have kept climbing, and September 2011 was her highest ever (+43).  Maybe it's relatively easy to be popular as Secretary of State, as long as there are no policy disasters--a lot of the job is representing American interests and speaking up for American values. 

Class Conflict in America?

A recent New York Times story noted that perceived conflict between the rich and poor has increased since 2009.  Although it said that "traditionally, class has been less a part of the American political debate than it has been in Europe,"  it didn't mention that the question it talks about has also been asked in a number of other countries as part of the International Social Survey Programme.  Actually, the ISSP includes four questions about conflict:  poor people vs. rich people, working class vs. middle class, management vs. workers, and people at the bottom vs. people at the top.  In principle, people might distinguish between these types of conflicts, but in practice they tend to rate them all the same way:  if you think there's a lot of conflict between rich and poor, you probably think there's a lot between management and workers.  If you add the scores together to get a general measure of conflict and take the average for each nation, here are the rankings in 1999 (the last time the questions were included in the ISSP),  from most to least perceived conflict.

N      mean
Chile           1362   0.91
Portugal        1092   0.77
Hungary         1035   0.60
Philippines     1168   0.47
Russia          1409   0.46
United States   1025   0.25
Poland           794   0.14
Slovenia         844   0.10
Great Britain    691   0.04
Latvia           944  -0.00
New Zealand      993  -0.01
Germany East     446  -0.08
Australia       1540  -0.11
Sweden          1026  -0.15
France          1746  -0.19
Slovakia         948  -0.23
Bulgaria         749  -0.25
Israel          1140  -0.26
North Ireland    709  -0.27
Czech Rep       1431  -0.31
Germany West     789  -0.32
Cyprus           920  -0.42
Norway          1103  -0.54
Austria          830  -0.55
Spain           1091  -0.61 

By this measure, the United States ranks pretty high in perceived class conflict, sixth out of twenty-four. Britain, which is often seen as a class-bound society, is several spots behind. The Contentious French (in Charles Tilly's phrase) rank below average. In fact, there are so many surprises that it's hard to see any pattern.

Who thinks Republicans are liberal?

As I mentioned last time, many people seem to have incorrect or idiosyncratic understandings of "liberal" and "conservative."  A December 2007 USA Today/Gallup Poll asked people to rate the leading Democratic and Republican candidates.  The original data for this survey are available, so it is possible to see who got things "wrong."  First, the average ratings of the candidates, which are on a scale of 1-5, with higher meaning more liberal. 

Mike Huckabee   2.27

Fred Thompson   2.35

Mitt Romney     2.39

John McCain     2.51

Rudy Giuliani   2.76

John Edwards    3.47

Barack Obama    3.59

Hillary Clinton 3.74

There are no major surprises here--there's a clear separation between the Democratic and Republican candidates, and the ratings within each party are reasonable too.  However, these are averages--the individual ratings for each candidate covered the whole range.  I divided people into three groups--those who rated the top three Republican candidates (Giuliani, McCain, and Huckabee) as, on the average, more conservative than the three Democrats; those who rated them as more liberal; and those who rated them as exactly the same.  (I just used three Republicans to reduce the number of people who had to be excluded because they didn't rate all of the candidates used).  So one group got the rough placement right, as conventionally defined, and the other two didn't. 

Comparing ratings of own ideological position:
correct (83%): 41% said they were conservative, 37% moderate, 22% liberal 
no difference (7%):  33% conservative, 51% moderate, 16% liberal
backwards (11%): 59% conservative, 32% moderate, and 9% liberal

Comparing party preference:
correct: 45% Republican, 48% Democrat, 7% independent 
no difference:  33% Republican, 53% Democrat, 14% independent
backwards: 22% Republican, 74% Democrat, 4% independent


So a significant group of people seem to be working on the following principles:  they like the Democrats, they hear that it's good to be conservative and bad to be liberal, so they conclude the Democrats are more conservative.  Although they definitely a minority, there are enough of them so that they might make up a major part of the shift in self-identification.  That is, we've gone from 35-40% of people calling themselves liberals to 20-25%, or a drop of about 15%.  That's close to the size of the "backwards" group.