Political Socialisation in the UK: Describing Generational Changes of Values

A growing bulk of research examines intergenerational shifts in attitudes and the extent to which they are attributable to new cohorts of voters being socialised under different socioeconomic and cultural climates. This paper sets off from this research and provides an overview of how age and generational gaps across economic and sociocultural value dimensions have developed in the context of the United Kingdom. The paper further describes how demographic characteristics such as class, education, and gender affect attitudinal differences between and within generations. Tracing changes in values across a 30-year period, we find that economic attitudes are cyclical rather than veering in a particular direction. Sociocultural values, however, have been consistently shifting towards social liberalism – a change that is driven primarily by generational replacement. Moreover, against growing speculation of increasing ideological polarisation between different age groups, our analysis of British electoral data suggests that age gaps in attitudes, rather than growing, are either stable or decreasing in magnitude throughout the period examined.