“If it really is the case that the 55 to 64 year old age group is an outlier as the more present-day-centric group, it suggests that a simple “rational” explanation (“why care about the future when I’ll be dead soon anyway”) might not be the best explanation. Other socio-cultural factors may be at play.”
I can see two decent explanations for why the 55 to 64 age group would have less longtermist values than either adjacent age cohort.
The first is cohort effects. As the Pew Research Center points out, there is no simple relationship between age and political ideology. While voters tend to become more conservative as they age (along with other effects on time preference, etc), their ideological identity is also greatly affected by the administration under which they come of age politically.
The second is the findings from Ahlfeldt et al. and others that 1) while voters become more conservative as they age, they become rapidly more conservative around retirement age, and 2) the very oldest people seem to experience some “end of life altruism” because they have very weak self-interested reasons (due to so little time remaining) and so their self-interested reasons are dominated by ego-transcending values such as altruism. (See especially the provocative graphs on p. 15 of Ahlfeldt et al.)
If either of these explanations is true, then it could be that the “rational” explanation is empirically adequate, but there are other effects in play as well.
On the topic of the outlier age group:
“If it really is the case that the 55 to 64 year old age group is an outlier as the more present-day-centric group, it suggests that a simple “rational” explanation (“why care about the future when I’ll be dead soon anyway”) might not be the best explanation. Other socio-cultural factors may be at play.”
I can see two decent explanations for why the 55 to 64 age group would have less longtermist values than either adjacent age cohort.
The first is cohort effects. As the Pew Research Center points out, there is no simple relationship between age and political ideology. While voters tend to become more conservative as they age (along with other effects on time preference, etc), their ideological identity is also greatly affected by the administration under which they come of age politically.
The second is the findings from Ahlfeldt et al. and others that 1) while voters become more conservative as they age, they become rapidly more conservative around retirement age, and 2) the very oldest people seem to experience some “end of life altruism” because they have very weak self-interested reasons (due to so little time remaining) and so their self-interested reasons are dominated by ego-transcending values such as altruism. (See especially the provocative graphs on p. 15 of Ahlfeldt et al.)
If either of these explanations is true, then it could be that the “rational” explanation is empirically adequate, but there are other effects in play as well.