Tilley 1
“The Influence of Parental Conservative Ideology on Young Adults and Their Ideological Contradiction toward Health Care Reform”
Amanda Tilley
PSC-318
Dr. Matthew Desantis
16 December 2009
Introduction
Reaching the end of his first year President Barack Obama faces two wars, globalization, economic recession, and rising unemployment, but the prophet of hope has not given up, especially on the important issue of reforming healthcare in the United States. The reformation of health care has been a national debate since the early 1900s. Recently, the issue of health care has taken precedence over many other issues for American families. Obama Administration’s proposed legislation was the first health major care reform initiative to pass through the House of Representatives since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid programs. Currently, 47 million Americans are uninsured[1] and growing with unemployment reaching 10 percent. Family providers that are losing their jobs are also losing benefits, like health care, but aren’t making enough money to pay for private insurance that covers their entire family and make too much money to be considered for options like Medicaid. President Obama and reform supports are proposing a public health care option, which is causing chaos among the opposition. The public option, in laments terms, is projected to shorten the gap between cost and quality of health care coverage for all Americans. The government will provide a health care option at a lower cost than most private insurance options, which must abide by the same regulations and benefit requirements of the private insurers. By establishing a public option there will also be the existence of an insurance stock exchange in which consumers could view each plan’s, both public and private, premium and pick which suits their family best. The public option must be self-sustaining, as well as, establish contingency funds and are subject to adjust premiums annually to assure viability.[2]This capitalist idea is supposed to drive competition between all of the insurance providers which, in theory, will lower overall costs and raise quality of coverage and care.
In general most Republicans reject this form of a public option and for the most part Democrats support the public option. However, climbing unemployment rates and a weighing recession affect all people, despite political ideology. Those affected most by the recession would also benefit from healthcare reform; that being young adults between 19 and 29 years old. In 2005, of nonelderly adults that are uninsured, 30 percent were young adults ages 19-29.[3]Students graduating from high school or college are entering a diluted working world and being dropped from their pre-existing health care providers. Students who are covered under the State Child Health Insurance program or Medicaid are only covered until they are 19 years old. If a student is covered by their parent’s employee-based private insurance, but they do not attend college, they are dropped from coverage at 19. If the student goes to college they are dropped after graduation. If, and that’s a big if, a student finds a job right out of high school or college it is very rare that the job will provide a health benefits package or even a high enough wage for the young adult to purchase their own private insurance. About one-third of workers ages19-29 earns less than $10 an hour; among those workers 43 percent are uninsured3. About 26 states have extended the coverage age from 19 years old to up to 30 years old in New Jersey,[4] but some are reliant upon education and dependency status. Encouraging a public health care option for young adults would relieve some financial pressures as these students head out into the ‘real world’. The proposed health care legislation would also require all people, especially young adults, to be covered by some form of health care; similar to state initiatives regarding auto insurance. Young adults are more likely not to enroll in health care policies even if they are available because they are young and healthy; however young adults are more prone to emergency room visits that any other age group. They also have severe health risks, nearly one-third of all people diagnosed with HIV are young adults, of the 21 million women categorized as a young adult approximately 3.5 million get pregnant each year, and since the 1990s obesity has risen by 70 percent in this age group, which is the fastest increase among all adults.3Clearly, young adults are not as invincible as they believe and under the current system it is hurting the taxpayers. Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, spoke of this issue in an interview, “Every one of your hospitals have brought in a young person who is hurt and has been in a motorcycle accident or something and has no insurance and that's really a tax on everyone else. Nationally, on average, it's about $1,000 per policy. Everybody's got to pay $1,000 more because you've got to take care of them. That's why we want to get younger, healthier people mandatory (insurance), insist that they all join, that way we get everybody in the system."[5]More importantly is that in 2007 two-thirds of young adults without health insurance went without needed medical attention for various reasons including cost.5 The benefits of the health care reform initiative have given young adults a vision of hope. CNN exit polls of the 2008 Presidential Election claim that 68 percent of young adults voted for Obama with 9 percent saying health care reform is the most important issue.[6]Today, about two-thirds of young voters in the United States, regardless of political ideology, believe that their government should provide health care to all Americans.[7] However, out of all American voters today only 41 percent approve of the proposed health care plan.[8]
Recently, the public option of the health care reform legislation has been disbanded; however, Democrats are pushing for two private national policies that will be mandated by the Office of Personnel Management, the department that issues federal employees their health benefits.[9]President Obama encouraged the effort in addressing health care reform, “especially since it's aimed at increasing choice and competition and lowering cost.”9As the health care dilemma increases it is interesting to observe how parental ideology influences student ideology on issue like health care and how such an influence is ultimately detrimental to the well-being of young adults. Research conducted over the last few months on the campus of High Point University, a Southern private school, by university students analyzes student responses about health care reform as well as including analysis of background information including ideology and parental ideology.
LiteraryAnalysis
The study of parental ideological influence over child sociopolitical attitudes has been observed in the U.S. by analyzing relative voting behaviors. Shrikant Dash conducted a study in 1992 named the Transmission of Ideology and Partisanship in India, Canada, and the United States. Dash evaluates how strong each parent’s ideology and partisanship influences that of their child in three differing democratic nations. He used survey data from high school students in all three countries in order to analyze “the relative strength of partisanship and ideology in the transmission of political attitudes.”[10]Dash notes that outside influences such as the Caste system in India as well as race in the United States affect political affiliation, as well as understanding that the basis of parental ideology and partisanship are based off of the student’s perspective and may not directly reflect the actual views of the parent.10
The study revealed that transmission of ideology depended on the type of governing body and culture; although all three governments are democracies, Canada and India use a parliamentary system with multiple political parties and the United States relies on a presidential system with only two political parties. The study revealed that categorizing under political ideology was prevalent in India and Canada where there are more diverse political parties; whereas, in the United States people are more focused on political party rather than an ideology. Dash also discovered that the transmission of political ideas from parent to child depended upon the familial culture of that society. Although a democracy, the religious and historic culture of India places a higher emphasis on paternal importance. Males are often seen as the true head of the household and so their political view is respected and imitated by their children. Graphs indicating a liberal to conservative scale based on the role of the government in the economy shows almost identical graphs between the paternal and self views. Canada’s only correlation between parental and self views was that all three graphs were skewed to reveal more moderately conservative views. The United States however, show that self views reflect maternal views focused between moderate and conservative stances. It is debated that this is because children spend more time with their mothers in America.10 Self proclaimed moderate views in Canada and America also show that there is “a decline in conservatism from the parents’ generation.” 10 The study also shows that throughout all of the countries, fathers are more extremely conservative than mothers or students. The study then identifies that some issues may lie in the distinction between ideology and partisanship. For the United States Dash provides a table discussing the Transmission of Partisanship in the United States. Contradictory to the ideological study, this evaluation shows that in national elections that 84.3 percent of students registered as Democrats voted along with their fathers and only 77.3 percent with their mothers. However, mothers still hold strong within the Republican Party with 92.2 percent of their children also voting Republican and only 83.6 of Republicans voting with their fathers.10 Overall, the study concluded that, “the distribution of ideological preferences in different generations can be as much a result of the kind of ideological choices available as they are a part of the socialization process itself”; 10 as well as noting that transmission is dependent upon the “relative influence of male versus female parents, given their role as independent political and social actors in the eyes of their children” 10and that party identification not ideology, especially in the United States, decides the view of social issues.
Hypotheses
Beginning in September we conducted research about President Obama’s health care reform initiative. As a group, we decided to distribute surveys to students on High Point University’s campus in order to gain information on students’ positions on the health care reform. We chose to distribute these to only students as most will be graduating shortly and providing their own health insurance in the near future.
H1: Young adults, ages 18-24, are known to show the least amount of political activism through voting; in the 2008 presidential election only 49% of 18-24 year olds voted.[11] However, most adults associate themselves with a particular ideology or political party even if they have not voted. With the aid of our surveys, I believe that most young adults are ideologically influenced by their parents, and more specifically that conservative parents will directly or indirectly influence their children to be conservative. For all intents of this study I will regard “conservative” ideology as including “very conservative.”
H2: As discussed, young adults make up 30 percent of uninsured nonelderly Americans.3 However, of all young adults attending college full-time, about 68 percent are dependent upon their parents’ employer health insurance benefits or are covered under individual and university based plans.3This means that once these students graduate, unless they are able to find a job that includes health benefits or they make enough money to pay for private insurance immediately following graduation, they will be without health coverage.The new health care plan will offer some type of government-sponsored insurance or private options under government directive that will create competition to lower prices and raise quality coverage. President Obama is also trying to push a government mandate that all U.S. citizens must have health insurance or incur some sort of fine. This will ensure that young adults are able to find and pay for health coverage once their parents’ insurance drops them. Generally speaking most conservatives oppose this legislation because of increased government control.Understanding that conservative young adults are directly influenced by their parents’ ideologies I believe that most young adults would support a public option regardless of political affiliation.
Methods
We distributed 34 random surveys to 34 full-time students throughout High Point University’s campus. Each survey consisted of the same 21 close-ended questions and responses. The questions were divided into personal background questions and policy related questions. The questions were designed in an unbiased manner and allowed the person being surveyed to communicate their beliefs through a scale system.We each entered the data into an SPSS dataset. Numbers were used to convey qualitative data, for example, a question regarding gender would be put into the dataset as 1 for male or 2 for female depending on the response. For my first hypothesis, of the 21 questions I focused on self political ideology and parental ideology categorized by mother and father. I thought it was best to compare these questions because they were directed toward the respondent in the same manner. However, I must note that the political ideology of the mothers and fathers of the respondents was answered by the respondent and may not directly reflect the true views of the parents. Under SPSS I used the frequency function to see how many respondents categorized themselves under a specific ideology and copied this for the mother and father responses. I then chose to comparatively analyze through the cross-tabs function the political ideology of the respondent and the ideology of the mother, as well as, the ideology of the respondent and the ideology of the father. The cross-tabs function supplied me with multiple tables and bar graphs that gave greater insight into how the ideologies corresponded between the respondent and the mother as well as the respondent and the father. This method allows me to directly compare the respondents’ ideologies to the mothers’ and fathers’ ideologies and evaluate if they correlate or not. If they correlate, meaning if the respondent is conservative and their parents are conservative then my hypothesis will be proved correct, if they do not match then my hypothesis will be disproved. Again, for all intents of this study I will regard “conservative” ideology as including “very conservative.” However, there are outside influence that have not been taken into account for the purpose of this study. Ideologies are the only evidence being analyzed to prove or disprove the stated hypothesis. Known influences such as gender, religion, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and regional residency have not been factored in to this equation.
For my second hypothesis I used the same SPSS dataset originally entered by our group. I again chose to comparatively analyze survey questions through the cross-tabs function. I selected to analyze the respondents political ideology compared to their response of if they support a public option. I then compared the respondents’ mothers’ ideologies to the respondents answer to the proposed question regarding the public health care option. SPSS then again portrayed such data through various tables and bar charts. Once again for all intents of this study I will regard “conservative” ideology as including “very conservative.”Comparing such information will allow me to view if the respondent replied as a conservative and if he or she then supports the public option. Again, ideologies and responses to the question “Does the respondent support a public option?” are the only evidence being analyzed for this study. Known influences such as gender, religion, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and regional residency have not been factored in to this equation.
I decided to compare the survey questions this way, much like that of Shrikant Dash’s research in Transmission of Ideology and Partisanship in India, Canada, and the United States. Although all of the questions for the research under that study were not revealed, he compared self and parental ideologies of students in India, Canada, and the United States.10 He then compared scaled ideologies of all three groups to a government policy question related to the economy.10 I am comparing scaled ideologies of all three groups to the respondents’ answer to a policy question regarding health care reform.
Findings
Regarding my first hypothesis I conducted comparative analysis of respondent ideology to mother and father ideology through the cross-tabs function of SPSS. As far as ideological frequency of the respondent, 3 considered themselves very liberal, 4 are liberal, 8 are moderate, 13 are conservative, 5 are very conservative, and 1 marked “other” (Chart1.1). Respondents answering under the conservative category make up 52.9 percent of total surveyed respondents. Respondents answering for their mothers’ ideologies believe that of the 34 surveyed, 0 are very liberal, 4 are liberal, 8 are moderate, 13 are conservative, 6 are very conservative, and 3 didn’t know (Chart1.2). Fathers were listed as 2 are very liberal, 1 is a liberal, 5 are moderate, 16 are conservative, 6 are very conservative, and 4 didn’t know (Chart 1.3). In observing Charts 1.1 and 1.2 I noticed that the respondents’ ideologies were quite similar to the mothers’ ideologies, which is an interesting fact that correlates with Dash’s findings of student ideologies reflecting their mother’s in America because they spend so much more time with them.10