Does Generation Z not want to work? Does it have different work related attitudes? A few years ago, I was asked these questions about Generation Y (supposedly born between the early 1980s and 1999). Now I get such questions from journalists about Generation Z (supposedly born since the year 2000). The immediate cause is typically that yet another TikTok video, management guru, entertainer, activist or Twitter user rumored, almost always without data to back it up, that such and such generation behaves in this or that way.

Such purported generational differences are seemingly supported by the likes of Jean Twenge. However, the way that generations are described are all but clear. For example, Gen Y on the one side is said to subordinate everything to the goal of “getting ahead in their job and career.” At the same time, the same authors write about the same generation that “work and family are far more important to them than a steep career path” (Hurrelmann and Albrecht 2014: 33, 42). Many statements about Generations Z are similarly contradictory; for example if it said that Generation Y has “needs for security, orientation and a sense of belonging [which] stand flexibly alongside performance orientation and ambition as well as the desire for variety, individual development and enjoyment of life” (Klaffke 2014: 73). Such statements are like horoscopes. They claim something and at the same time its opposite. That way, you can always identify with some part of the statement.

But what should we observe, if indeed generations do exist? Simply put, the hypothesis of generations postulates that individiduals are different because of when they were born, regardless of their age and regardless of when you ask them. However, if these latter two effects, known as “age effects” and “period effects”, are taken into account, then there are hardly any “generation effects” left. So you can explain people’s attitudes by their age and you can explain people’s attitudes by when they were interviewed. But you can hardly explain people’s attitudes by their year of birth. And in this respect, there are, measurably, no generations. I can say this because I came to this subject wanting to find out the opposite. A literary agency offered me the prospect of a lucrative book contract if only I could show that Generation Y “is different.” But I just couldn’t find anything.

This is why I am writing this blog post. It is based on the article “Work Motivation Is Not Generational but Depends on Age and Period”, which I have just published in the Journal of Business and Psychology and which is available open access (for free and for everyone to access). Lo and behold, this peer reviewed article shows that if you take into account the effect of different life stages and different interview times, then there are hardly any generational effects that could explain work motivation or any other work-relevant trait. This means that, yes, young people think differently about work than old people. And yes, we all think differently about work than we used to. But no, some generations do not think systematically differently about work when asked at the same age and at the same time. If you do not take these age and period effects into account, then you get the left graph, where it seems as if one generation after another finds work less important.

But if you take period and age effects into account, then you get the right graph, where you can see that work motivation does not depend on when someone has been born. Time and again, this pattern emerges: it is not generational affiliation that explains our thinking, but when we are asked about something, because we now all think differently than we did in the past. So if you ask different generations at the same time, it turns out that they think almost exactly the same. I also checked this for the subjective importance of (1) leisure time, (2) good work hours, (3) the opportunity to use initiative, (4) generous holidays, (5) thinking that you can achieve something, (6) having a responsible job, (7) having a job that is interesting, (8) having a job that meets one’s abilities, (9) having pleasant people to work with, and (10) meeting pleasant people as important aspects of one’s job. Wherever you look, you find virtually no generational effects. I also searched in 34 different countries: Again, no generational effects to speak of.

So why do we continue to believe that generations exist when really they do not? I think that there are three reasons  why we see generations where there are none:

Confusing generational effects with age and period effects

Our intuitive impression is often that, for example, “young people want to work less today”. This is not wrong. It just has nothing to do with generations, but is due to the fact that a) young people were always less eager to work than the middle-aged (which is called an age effect) and b) that all people (regardless of age and year of birth) consider gainful employment to be less important today than they did in the past (which is called a period effect). So we confuse age and period effects with generational effects and therefore see generations where what actually happens is that people change their attitudes with age and time periods.

However, to say that period effects rather than generation effects are responsible for something is not just a semantic difference. Rather, the difference has real consequences. For example, anyone who explains a lower work motivation through generational affiliation must assume that a certain generation and only this generation is less motivated to work. However, anyone who identifies a period effect as the reason behind changing work motivation can infer that the entire workforce is less motivated today than in the past. The former may need “generational coaching”, the latter requires an examination of the changing work motivation of all employees.

Generations as a new -ism

The second reason why we (want to) believe in generations is that “generationism” has become a new -ism, such as sexism or racism. Our brains love to divide people into groups, as this allows us to see our own social group as better others, which gives us a satisfying feeling. Yet, this is not only immoral, but often also illegal.

Fortunately, we have now understood that characteristics such as gender or skin color say little about people, because a) the groups that are kept apart by such criteria often do not differ in relevant characteristics and b) it is not okay either way to evaluate individuals based on their group characteristics, rather than perceiving them as individuals who may deviate from the group that we assign them to. Simply put, it does not do justice to an individual to categorize her as “woman”, “white” or “old”. However, the irresistible mechanism of 1) categorizing, 2) stereotyping and then 3) discriminating based on inborn characteristic happens not only with skin color or gender, but also with the characteristic of birth year. And so we end up with derisive statements such as “Ok Boomer” or “Generation Snowflake.”

However, discriminating individuals based on their birth year is just as unacceptable as racism or sexism. But while we rightly scandalize discrimination when it is based on gender or skin color, we do not (yet) scandalize discrimination when it happens on the basis of the innate characteristic of birth year. Yet discrimination based on one inborn characteric is no better than on another.

Generations as a business model

A third and last reason why we assume that generations exist, even though they do not, is that people simply make money with this claim. These self-proclaimed “youth researchers” or “Gen Z/Y understanders” must ignore scientific evidence that contradicts their business model, because their income depends on selling “generation-sensitive” coaching, books and key note speeches that advice on a phantom that is disguised as a phenomenon.

Just google it. You will discover an astonishing correlation: those who firmly claim that generations exist earn money with this claim, recommending themselves on their websites as generational experts to be be invited as coaches or speakers. Contrary to this, those who, on the other hand, demonstrate that it makes no sense to differentiate between generations do not profit financially from this claim but are usually boring university professors who do not make money by showing that generations do or do not exist. If you find an exception, send me an email. I am still searching.

So, this is it, empirically, generations do not exist across a wide range of attitudes. And those who try to make you believe otherwise probably do so because they profit from doing so.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to write to me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Martin_Schroe

or Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/martinschroeder.bsky.social

And in the spirit of open science and replicability, you find the entire code with which I calculated my results with the open access article .

Der Beitrag Why generations do not exist erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

Imagine that things are getting better, hugely better, but no one knows.

You might take me for a hopeless optimist in saying that things are getting better, but far from it, it is actually a cold look at the data that makes any other view seem nonsensical. It also hardly matters how you define progress, as the world and life in Germany is getting better in almost any regard.

Want people to not be hungry? While even around 1980 almost half of humanity lived in extreme poverty, the number now is one in ten.

Want world peace? Since the early 1950s, annual battledeaths have declined tenfold, Syria notwithstanding.

Want children to not die? Want countries to become more democratic, intelligence to increase and people to be more satisfied with their life? Well, guess what, all of this is happening, right now, but no one notices.

Der Beitrag Why the world is getting better but no one notices erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

I am pretty sure you, and everyone you know, has asked that question. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, I can actually show with how many working hours people are most satisfied on average. And the results are pretty strange. In short, while mothers can be satisfied with their life while working long or short hours, fathers become unsatisfied with their life when they work shorter hours.

You can check out the results in this graph, which shows how the life satisfaction of each group is related to working hours.

To put this differently, fathers – and to a lesser degree childless men and women, are most satisfied with life when working full time hours or more. In contrast, hours in employment hardly affect the life satisfaction of mothers. The rational maximization of income as postulated by family economics cannot explain these results, as they are even found in household where women earn more than men. Because the results are also found among those with secure jobs and very little household work and childcare duties, they also contradict the predictions by expansionist role theory that men and women are better off in egalitarian employment arrangements. The results change little with time, cohorts and educational groups. Except for childless women, they therefore fit best with the predictions of traditional role theory, which suggests that people are most satisfied when adhering to stereotypical gender roles.

Now, if you ask me, I am puzzled as to how this can come about. I thought we live in a world by now where men and women – and especially fathers and mothers profit equally from an immersion into working life. Alas, the data seems to contradict this.

Here is a link to the article (sadly, behind a paywall).

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/zfsoz.2018.47.issue-1/zfsoz-2018-1004/zfsoz-2018-1004.xml

Der Beitrag With how man working hours are people happy? erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

But does someone from Sweden really wake up in the morning to thank god that she does not live in a country with more inequality? Probably not… Indeed, empirical studies that compare whether countries with more inequality have a happier population showed mixed results. Some found that indeed, countries with more inequality have a more satisfied population. But others found the opposite: countries with more inequality actually have a MORE satisfied population. Go figure.

I think that the problem of existing studies is that they compare countries. They can show whether a country that is more equal than another country also has a happier population. But this is not how it works. We do not compare our inequality to some other country, we compare what we experience now to how what we have come used to from our own country. Using data from the World Values Survey, the British Household Panel Study, the Australian panel study of Household Income and Labour Dynamics, the Korean Labor and Income Panel, the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring study, the Swiss Household Panel and the German Socio-Economic Panel, I can indeed show that people are less satisfied when inequality in their own country is higher than it used to be. But they are not more satisfied when they live in a country with less inequality than another country. The article just appeared in the Journal of Happiness Studies:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9860-3

Der Beitrag Does inequality make people unhappy? erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

Using data from 12 countries over 100 years, I can show with my co-author Louis Chauvel that trade unions recruit more members after inequality has been high. Strong trade unions then fight inequality. But in doing so, they destroy what helped them to recruit members in the first place. Once they have managed to lower inequality, no one has an incentive to join a trade union anymore. Trade unions then lose members, so that inequality can eventually increase again. If this happens, eventually people have an interest to join trade unions again, and they do. So again you have trade unions fighting inequality, but by doing so sowing the seeds of their own demise. We thus found the following dynamic:

We found this dynamica characterizes the development of inequality and trade union membership in Australia (from 1950- 2010), Canada (1941-2010), Denmark (1870-2010), France (1905-2009), Germany (1891-1998), Italy (1974-2009), Japan (1947-2010), the Netherlands (1914-1999), Norway (1900-2008), Sweden (1903-2010), the UK (1918-2009) and the US (1917-2011). By showing this empirically, we reconceptualise the relationship between inequality and union density as a prey and predator model, where predators eat prey – unions destroy inequality, but thereby also destroy their own basis for survival. By empirically showing that trade union density and social inequality influence each other in this way over long periods, this article contributes shows how social problems get met by social reactions, but these reactions overshoot and they often come to late.

For the entire article, check out this address:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12128

Der Beitrag Inequality and trade unions as prey and predator erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11211-016-0276-8

Der Beitrag How we get used to income inequality erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

I thought I would let you in on my newest research results. I wanted to know how, with increasing social inequality, conceptions of ‘fair’ social inequality have changed? I will show you in the following, how justice norms in the media have changed from favoring a more egalitarian distribution of incomes to favoring more social inequality.

In order to understand this, I have looked at changes in income inequality and I have read 600 articles that appeared in the NY Times since 1950 and that contained the search terms ‘income* social* equal* justice poverty.’ Thus, I looked at all articles that make reference to incomes, social matters, equality justice and poverty. I have then coded the statements in these articles according to two types of statements. Statements that in one way or another argue for more social inequality I have given then code ‘individualism.’ For example, the following statements reflect the code ‘individualism’:

1) Social inequality results from merit and should thus not be reduced.

2) One has no right to take from individuals to redistribute to others.

3) Redistribution has to be avoided as it destroys individual responsibility and / or freedom.

4) Inequality is economically productive

5) Redistributive spending is wasteful.

6) Redistributive spending creates dependent or unemployed recipients.

Statements that have argued in one way or another against more social inequality I have given the code ‘egalitarianism.’ For example, the following statements have been given this code:

1) Basic needs must be met for everyone.

2) Public investments should create good jobs for everyone.

3) Social equality is economically productive.

4) People have human rights to social transfers and social protection.

5) Wealthy people should pay disproportionately more than poorer ones.

6) Everyone should own property / have wealth.

I have written down guidelines in a codebook as to when assign what code and with the help of this codebook, myself and a student were able to code articles with the same justice views in about 80 percent of the cases. So what justice view is assigned to what article is not a matter of subjective opinion – even if some of this can never be entirely ruled out.

So what are the results? The dots in the following Figure shows how many statements I found in the NY Times that argued in favor of elevated social inequality, divided by the number of all articles in the NY Times of the same year. I have used a locally weighted scatter plot smoothing regression, which uses 20 percent of the available data around each point, to estimate a curve that fits the long run trend in how often this justice view has been found per year (solid line). Finally, the dashed line shows the Gini of the relevant year and therefore shows income inequality.

As one can see, statements in favor of more social inequality were very rare before the 1970s, at a time when social inequality was actually low. They increased when social inequality was very low in the 1970s.

What about the opposite view, how often can we find ‘egalitarian’ statements that argue for a more equal distribution of incomes? The following Figure shows this, using the same methods.

As you can see, arguments for a more equal distribution of income were very prevalent at the end of the 1960s, but have declined since then. Another way to show how arguments in favor of more social inequality have overpowered arguments in favor of less social inequality is to graph how many individualistic arguments existed each year, divided by the average number of egalitarian arguments per year. The following Figure shows this curve as well.

As one can see, while individualistic arguments were consistently less than egalitarian ones (measures of less than 1 on the left y-scale), between 2000 and 2005, there are more statements arguing for more social inequality than statements arguing against it. This all happened when social inequality increased.

The point I am trying to make is simple: The increase of social inequality in the US could happen in the shadow of changing statements what is seen as socially just. While arguments in the 1960s mainly argued for more social equality, statements later on argue for more inequality.

Der Beitrag How have views on fair social inequality changed in the US since 1950? erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.

Der Beitrag Germany does not have the 1 percent erschien zuerst auf Martin Schroeder.