The winters of our discontent

 Back in 2011, I wrote about a question first asked by Gallup in 1952:  "As you look to the future, do you think life for people generally will get better, or will it get worse?"  I've also  had several posts on a question first asked in 1983:  "In America, each generation has tried to have a better life than their parents, with a better living standard, better homes, a better education, etc. How likely do you think it is that today's youth will have a better life than their parents--very likely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or very unlikely?"  Then I recently ran across two questions on how much confidence you have in the future of the United States:  one gives a choice of quite a lot, some, very little, or none; the other gives a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little.  The figure gives the results, summarized as positive minus negative answers, for all four questions:*  

  I fit a model in which answers are a combination of question plus year effects: the next figure shows the year effects, which can be regarded as representing the general view of the future in that year.  The zero point on the y scale is arbitrary, but the ups and downs are meaningful.

There is clearly a downward trend, but also a lot of year-to-year variation.  It dropped substantially in 2017, then bounced back in 2018 and 2019, before dropping to new lows after 2021.  

However, although all of the questions involve the future, the first two are about individual standards of living, while the last two are about the "United States."  Asking about the United States may make people think about institutions, particularly governmental institutions, so the trends might be different than for the questions about conditions of life.  Unfortunately, because of gaps in when the questions were asked, it's hard to be sure. But looking over the period since the 1970s, the downward trend seems to be stronger for the future of the United States than for the future of standards of living.  In 2016, net opinion on the "today's youth" question was +10, about the same as it was in 1995-96.  That is, views about the future of the economy were similar in  the year when incumbent Bill Clinton won easily and the year when Hillary Clinton was upset by Donald Trump.  I've said before that discontent with politics and political institutions is not primarily a symptom of discontent with the economy or everyday life, and I think that this is further evidence for that position.  

*For the questions with four options, I count the first two as positive and the last two as negative.  As a result, "some" is counted as positive for the first future of the US question but negative for the second.  An alternative approach would be to count a great deal and quite a lot as positive--ie, one out of four for the first question and two out of four for the second.  I chose to do it the way I did because people don't seem to pay much attention to the exact wording of the answers for questions of this type.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Whisky, you're the devil?

 In 2001, Gallup asked "Do you personally, think drinking in moderation--that is, one or two drinks a day--is good for your health, makes no difference, or is bad for your health?"  22% said good, 46% no difference, and 27% bad.  They have asked the question a number of times since then, most recently in 2024.  The figure shows the balance of opinion (percent good minus percent bad) over time:

It's a clear downward trend--that is, a shift towards seeing moderate drinking as bad for health.  More exactly, it seems like a small downward trend until 2018, followed by a larger downward trend.  Since the number of observations is small, it's not possible to be sure about the exact timing, but it is clear that there's been a stronger downward trend in "recent" years.  

A lot of people say that we no longer have a shared social reality, that people no longer trust authorities but instead just believe what they want to believe.  This is an issue on which the desire to come to particular conclusions is strong:  people who enjoy the gift of Bacchus will want to believe that moderate drinking is good for you, or at least harmless, while people who have religious objections to drinking will want to believe that it is harmful as well as sinful.  Yet there's been a large shift in opinion in a fairly short period of time.  There hasn't been a definitive study that's settled the issue, but my impression is that the tone of media coverage has changed:  there have been a lot of articles like this one that appeared in the New York Times yesterday, which has the online headline "Evidence Against Drinking has Grown."  

Demographic breakdowns aren't available for most of the surveys, but I have them for 2011 and 2024.

                         2011         2024           change

White                +4              -27           -31
NonWhite          -8              -53           -45

No Coll            -13               -41           -28
Some Coll         -9               -38            -29
Coll grad           +9              -32            -41

Men                   +8               -27            -35
Women              -13              -44            -31

Dem                    -2                -46            -44
Rep                     -6                -29            -23
Ind                        0               -36            -36

There has been substantial move in all groups towards saying that moderate drinking is bad for health.   The shift is smaller among Republicans than among Democrats:  the party difference in 2024 is statistically significant, although not overwhelmingly so (t of about 3).  This might reflect lower Republican trust in the media or scientific authorities.  But the basic picture is that all kinds of people become more likely to say that moderate drinking is bad for health.    Of course, people have more respect for medicine than for other institutions, but with rare exceptions, they only learn about the views of medical experts through the media.   That is, even though many people say that they don't trust the media (especially the "corporate media" or "legacy media"), they still generally follow it on issues that aren't the subject of political contestation.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]