Friday, February 5, 2021

I don't make the rules

 I ran across a question in the GSS that I hadn't known about:  whether you agree or disagree with the statement "People like me don't have any say about what the government does."  The means for people with and without a college degree (a five point scale running from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" with higher values indicating disagreement).

No clear trend among people without a college degree, but some decline (that is, increasing agreement) among people with a college degree.  The gap between the educational groups has declined pretty steadily except for an unusually low value in 2012 (the correlation between the size of the gap and year is -.84).  This seems to go against the common idea that in recent years educated people have been feeling pretty good, while less educated people becoming more alienated. 

The American National Election Studies has asked the same question in a simple agree/disagree format since the 1950s.  I'll have to look at trends in that by education and see if it shows the same pattern. 



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