Young people are more racially and ethnically diverse compared to older voters.

• Only 61.5% of 18-29 year old eligible voters are White Non-Hispanic compared to 73.6% of older voters. Young voters are more likely to identify as African-American (14.3% vs. 11.3%) and Latino (16.7% vs. 9.3%) compared to older voters.
• Young voters are more likely to have at least one parent who was born outside the US than voters over 30 (18.9% vs. 17.0%) compared to older voters.

Not all eligible youth are college students or have college experience

• Substantial portions (40.4%) of young eligible voters do not have any college experience. Approximately a quarter of young eligible voters are in college (24.4%)[1] and only 19.9% of young people have a college degree
• Asian-American youth are most likely to have a college degree (37.7%) followed by White Non-Hispanics (23.6%). Latino (10.9%) and African-American youth (11.7%) are least likely to have college degrees.

Young people are at many different life stages

• 19.1% of young eligible voters are married and 21.4% of young eligible voters have children that live with them.

Many youth impacted by economy, especially youth with no college experience

• Unemployment is a problem facing all youth, but youth without college experience are particularly affected by it. According to the March 2012 Current Population Study, 95.5% of eligible youth with college diplomas and 89.7% of those with some college experience are employed compared to 82.6% of youth with only a high school diploma and 71.9% of youth without a high school diploma.[2]
• Young people have almost twice the unemployment rate (12.6%) of those over 30 (6.7%). However the differences in unemployment are largest among those without a college degree. 20.1% of youth with no college experience are unemployed compared to 9.1% of those with no college experience over 30.

–Josh Littenberg-Tobias, CIRCLE Graduate Assistant

Source: CIRCLE analysis of Census  Current Population Survey (CPS)  March 2012

[2]Unemployment figures are not seasonally adjusted

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012 at 2:51 pm and is filed under CIRCLE Blog, Youth Demographics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.