Environmentalists rightly argue that we should be much more aware of scarcity. Resources run out; there is only so much waste that the earth can absorb; and exploiting habitats causes species to vanish. Environmentalists are not the only ones who recommend paying attention to scarcity. A budget, for example, is a representation of limited resources. Any household, organization, or nation should live within its budget. Raising awareness of scarcity is a project that I can sign up for.

On the other hand, some resources are not finite. We can make as many new cultural products as we want. Works of art, music, or literature from one cultural background need not deprive other traditions of space or resources. Ideas spread without losing their value; often they gain importance because of their diffusion. As Jefferson wrote, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

The Internet is another great example of a basically infinite resource. (Computers use electricity, but the amount of energy per byte is cut in half every 18 months.) More generally, there is no obvious limit to the growth and diffusion of human opportunity, so long as that growth takes the right forms. We cannot all get richer if that means that we all buy Hummers. But we can all get richer.

When scarcity dominates people’s thinking, they are unlikely to trust others. We may cooperate if we feel that we must, since resources are limited; but we seem to cooperate better when we are optimistic and expect everyone to win. There is “an association between distrust and economic insecurity and a limited-good view of the world” (Orlando Patterson, “Liberty Against the Democratic State,” in Mark E. Warren, Democracy and Trust, p. 155). Harry Boyte once argued on this blog that creative civic populism arises in times of optimism and growth, whereas narrowly technocratic and hierarchical politics is more typical when people are conscious of scarcity. Twentieth-century fascism played off scarcity, while FDR promised an infinite expansion of opportunity.

I would conclude that an awareness of scarcity is not intrinsically virtuous. It all depends on whether the good in question is actually scarce. We should be frugal with limited resources, but generous and extravagant with goods that that can be created infinitely.

I’ve belatedly read Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais’s book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, which is available in a post-election, paperback version. Winograd and Hais (fellows and bloggers at NDN) presciently predicted a sharp Democratic turn in American politics, thanks to a new generation of Americans who were more likely to vote and more aligned with the Democratic Party than their predecessors. They also advised exactly the kind of campaign–with a softer ideological edge, heavy use of social networking tools, and promises of transparency and participation–that carried Barack Obama on his improbable journey to Washington. Obama won by appealing to the very values and preferences that Winograd and Hais detected among Millennials; and young voters were his advantage from the Iowa Caucus through Election Day. I think John McCain’s loss was almost inevitable, but Obama, Clinton, or Edwards could have won the nomination. Obama took it on the strength of young voters.

We found similar generational patterns to Winograd and Hais in our recent paper entitled “The Millennial Pendulum.” Our paper added one small methodological refinement–we tracked political opinions over time for several cohorts–but didn’t provide much of a literature review. Any bibliography should start with Winograd and Hais.

Our work at CIRCLE is complementary to Millennial Makeover. We are interested in the policy opportunities afforded by a new generation that seems more concerned about equality than their predecessors were. And we are interested in all young adults, including college students at institutions like Tufts, which is a leader in developing the civic skills of active and enthusiastic Millennials. However, our emphasis is somewhat different. Winograd and Hais are in the business of predicting how today’s young people will vote and otherwise engage, and advising older leaders on how to engage them effectively. If you are interested in these questions, two directions will seem natural:

1. You will be interested in changes in majority opinions about issues and political parties by generation, even if these changes are fairly modest. The political status quo of 2004 represented a particular balance of public opinion. If that balance shifted by 5 percentage points, a whole new period would begin–as evidenced by the strikingly new priorities of President Obama’s budget. So if Millennials are 10- or 15-points different from Generation Xers in their average political opinions, the electoral implications are tremendous.

2. You will be especially interested in young voters, because those who vote have much more political influence than those who do not. To be sure, turnout statistics are not written in stone. We can find ways to raise the voting rate or to change the demographic composition of the electorate. But some groups are a lot easier to mobilize than others. For example, a majority of young people never attend college, and their turnout rate in the 2004 election was just 34% (PDF)–more than 20 points below the turnout rate of their peers who had been to college (even briefly). So, for the purpose of political strategy, it makes sense to think of the Millennials as high-achieving, college-attending, and middle-class. That is the group that will turn up in November.

In contrast, we are primarily concerned about policies for young people. We study the quality, availability, and distribution of educational, civic, and political opportunities. From that perspective:

1. Differences between the Millennials and their predecessors look much smaller than gaps among Millennials. In 2006, youth (ages 19-25) with no college experience had a volunteering rate of 8.3 percent, while their contemporaries with college experience reported a rate almost three times higher, at 24.4 percent. Likewise, on “Super Tuesday” in the 2008 presidential primaries, the turnout rate of college-educated young adults was four times higher than the turnout rate of their non-college peers. There is a twenty-point gap between the two groups in newspaper readership. Even union membership (rare for all young adults), is more common for college-educated youth.

There is also remarkable stability from generation to generation. Only 7 percent of students from the bottom quarter of the income distribution will obtain a bachelors degree by the age of 26, compared to 60 percent of those from the top quarter (PDF). A family’s class position generally reproduces itself. College attendance rates have not budged upward for 25 years. The proportions of high school students who fail reading and math assessments are almost identical to 1971 (according to an instrument designed to track changes). And at the community level, poor urban and rural areas remain in the same condition over time, or have declined with the loss of stable blue-collar jobs.

2. Because the distribution is so unequal, our priority is the one-in-three who do not complete high school during their adolescence. This group is under-sampled in surveys, invisible to market researchers, and dramatically under-served. Their political clout is small, and they know it. (Their confidence is terribly low.) But they are numerous and there is much that could be done to improve their situation.

These two tracks of research are not competitive, but can inform each other. Good policy requires successful political strategy; and it’s a smart strategy to propose good policies. For example, NDN proposes that we invest more in the computer training of working-class Americans–an idea that the President picked up because it is both a wise investment and smart politics. I don’t think that the Millennials who vote are sufficiently aware of inequalities in their own age group, partly because they attend schools and colleges that are more segregated and stratified than was the case in my youth. The ones who are discussing carbon emissions on Facebook have not even met their peers who lack access to computers. But their core values are egalitarian, and that provides an important opening for good policy.