The spring 2014 Harvard Public Opinion Project poll found that millennials, much like the general public, are conscious of and concerned about the growing income inequality in the United States. More than half of the respondents believed the gap between the rich and poor in America to be a major problem, with 64 percent reporting that they believe this gap has grown during their lifetimes.
The survey also found that possible solutions for mitigating income inequality were either just as controversial or more controversial among millennials as they were among the general population. Out of all the measures surveyed, no suggested solution received an approval rate of over 50 percent, with most efficacy rates polling between 30 and 40 percent.
Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 received the most polarized responses. Forty-six percent of those surveyed believed it to be an effective means of countering growing income inequality, with 26 percent coming down on the other side of the issue.
However, an overwhelming majority of economists have found that raising the minimum wage would indeed be an effective method of reducing income inequality. A recent study by Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that eleven out of twelve major recent studies concluded that raising the minimum wage would reduce the poverty rate. Dube maintains that the one study which claimed raising the minimum wage would raise the poverty rate, done by David Neumark in 2005, utilized irregular, “problematic” methodology. While one in four millennials believes raising the minimum wage to be an ineffective way to address the wealth gap, economists suggest otherwise.
This discrepancy between beliefs of the millennials and economists extends beyond the federal minimum wage. The spring 2014 survey found that one in five respondents deemed increasing access to high-quality preschool as an ineffective method of reducing the wealth gap. However, economists at the National Bureau of Research recently found that providing free, state-funded preschool to children of low socioeconomic status leads to higher earnings and greater economic mobility later in life. These findings were corroborated by economists at the University of Minnesota and University of California, Irvine, who found that early childhood programs eliminate the income-based cognitive and achievement gaps in young children.
Though a majority of millennials believes income inequality to be a problem worth addressing, the solutions found to be effective by economist are unpopular among the demographic. As such, the data leaves policy makers between a rock and a hard place.
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