Not on voting directly but relatedly, asking a nationally representative sample about explicit future or present attitudes did not find evidence to support the claim that younger people consider future people as equally deserving of help, though we did find that older people prioritise present people more than younger people do.
Maybe time preference is not quite the issue here. Older people have a peculiar scheme of long/short term individual/impartial preferences: since they won’t live much longer, it’s reasonable for them to discount their own future welfare at a higher rate—i.e., no sense in saving for old age anymore; but precisely because of their shorter life span, their self-interest may not weight so much when confronted with preferences for the welfare of others.
There is also some direct evidence on voting. I think the best evidence is the paper that Will cites in his age weighted voting post. Ahfeldt et al. found that across 82 studied referenda, the elderly voted largely in their generational self-interest.
There are some complications. For example, there is some evidence that referenda are easier to manipulate via advertising campaigns than other polls, which might lead people to vote more in self-interest here than elsewhere.
I think this remains an open question, but it’s one I’m looking into more carefully over the next month.
Wouldn’t this trend be better explained by the hypothesis that older people are usually more conservative? (e.g., I just confirmed that, in Brazil, opinions about the government among young and old people are symmetrically opposite)
Ahlfeldt et al. analyze 305 Swiss referenda and argue that aging effects swing free from cohort effects and status quo habituation effects. “The evidence, instead, suggests that voters make deliberate choices that maximize their expected utility conditional on their stage in the lifecycle.”
I think these trends are not better-explained by the hypothesis that older people are more conservative.
1. In the study, older voters were more likely to support health spending on risks to elderly health and less likely to support health care cost cuts, and less likely to support education spending, public transportation and infrastructure spending, and job creation. They were also neutral on the creation of sports facilities.
While I unfortunately haven’t been able to look at the 82 referenda to examine their specific content, on its face this looks less like a division on party lines and more like a division on lines of generational self-interest.
2. The authors report that “[W]e find that controlling for party affiliation (conservatives and greens) and region (Baden vs. Württemberg) reduces the age effect by about one-third (Table 5, columns 3 and 4).”
3. The fact that older people are more conservative itself requires explanation. Part of the explanation is plausibly that conservative ideology and political parties cater to the self-interest of older people. How much can be explained this way I cannot say.
Do we have any evidence that younger people are more longtermism eg in their voting than older people?
Not on voting directly but relatedly, asking a nationally representative sample about explicit future or present attitudes did not find evidence to support the claim that younger people consider future people as equally deserving of help, though we did find that older people prioritise present people more than younger people do.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5qr9fSNvaHaWpm8jy/older-people-may-place-less-moral-value-on-the-far-future#MH9jJcjazPJPaoAaP
Also, see Larks’ quick literature review on psychology research, which suggested “that older people discount the future less than younger people, which might suggest giving their votes more weight.” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b7BrGrswgANP3eRzd/age-weighted-voting#vqeyQAhSheoLZsTDY
Maybe time preference is not quite the issue here. Older people have a peculiar scheme of long/short term individual/impartial preferences: since they won’t live much longer, it’s reasonable for them to discount their own future welfare at a higher rate—i.e., no sense in saving for old age anymore; but precisely because of their shorter life span, their self-interest may not weight so much when confronted with preferences for the welfare of others.
There is also some direct evidence on voting. I think the best evidence is the paper that Will cites in his age weighted voting post. Ahfeldt et al. found that across 82 studied referenda, the elderly voted largely in their generational self-interest.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2753511
There are some complications. For example, there is some evidence that referenda are easier to manipulate via advertising campaigns than other polls, which might lead people to vote more in self-interest here than elsewhere.
I think this remains an open question, but it’s one I’m looking into more carefully over the next month.
Wouldn’t this trend be better explained by the hypothesis that older people are usually more conservative? (e.g., I just confirmed that, in Brazil, opinions about the government among young and old people are symmetrically opposite)
More on the question of what best explains these trends:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/88702/1/dp1552.pdf
Ahlfeldt et al. analyze 305 Swiss referenda and argue that aging effects swing free from cohort effects and status quo habituation effects. “The evidence, instead, suggests that voters make deliberate choices that maximize their expected utility conditional on their stage in the lifecycle.”
I think these trends are not better-explained by the hypothesis that older people are more conservative.
1. In the study, older voters were more likely to support health spending on risks to elderly health and less likely to support health care cost cuts, and less likely to support education spending, public transportation and infrastructure spending, and job creation. They were also neutral on the creation of sports facilities.
While I unfortunately haven’t been able to look at the 82 referenda to examine their specific content, on its face this looks less like a division on party lines and more like a division on lines of generational self-interest.
2. The authors report that “[W]e find that controlling for party affiliation (conservatives and greens) and region (Baden vs. Württemberg) reduces the age effect by about one-third (Table 5, columns 3 and 4).”
3. The fact that older people are more conservative itself requires explanation. Part of the explanation is plausibly that conservative ideology and political parties cater to the self-interest of older people. How much can be explained this way I cannot say.