The biggest concerns that millennials have center on poverty and economic inequality, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted in April and May by the Center for Marketing and Opinion Research at the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, found that 57 percent of 1,000 Ohio millennials surveyed named economic inequality and poverty as their top concerns.
The concern has reached its highest point among the millennial generation. Forty-three percent of Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1984) said that poverty and equality were their top concern and for baby boomers, it’s a tie at 35 percent between poverty/inequality and jobs.
Millennial concern about poverty and economic equality is likely caused by what they have seen throughout their young lives.
“Millennials – a generation larger than but not as politically active as baby boomers – suffered from the time they first turned 18 in the late ’90s. They witnessed the dotcom bubble burst, the crippling economic impacts of 9/11, the crushing Great Recession, all while taking on college debt that was supposed to include a promise of high wages,” Doug Livingston of the Akron Beacon Journal said.
The student debt burden that the millennial generation has faced has also contributed to their concerns about poverty. Millennial concerns about economic inequality is also the result of living through an economy that has seen the middle class shrink.
Cory Maidens, a 34-year-old Akron man who is currently unemployed and has been laid off twice, is more concerned about what is going to happen in the future. His wife’s librarian salary keeps the family afloat and the couple is fortunate that they have no children.
“I’ll be OK. I know I’ll survive. I’ll find work, something. But long term? It seems like we’re on a steep decline that doesn’t show any sign of turning around,” Maidens said.
