The millennial generation: the lives of this generation may not be what you think

The millennial generation: the lives of this generation may not be what you think
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According to Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, although the millennial generation are acknowledging more political issues, they still believe common racial and gender stereotypes.

According to research, the millennial generation are more likely to die prematurely from suicide or drug overdose, frequently embrace multiracial/unconventional gender identities, however this doesn’t mean they are any more accepting of people different from them compared with previous generations.

What do you know about the millennial generation?

Millennials are young adults in their 20s and 30s, and according to a new report from the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, millennials have a wider set of identities from which they can choose: unlike older generations, millennials are frequently embracing multiracial and unconventional gender identities.

However, this doesn’t mean they are any more accepting of people different from them compared with previous generations. The report found that millennials believe common racial and gender stereotypes to be true just as much as people from the Baby Boomer cohort, who were born from 1946 to 1964, and Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980.

Millennial health

Mortality rates among young adults have also increased substantially, according to the report’s analyses of public health, written by Stanford economist Mark Duggan and economics undergraduate Jackie Li.

Between 2008 and 2016, mortality rates among those between 25 and 34 years old increased by more than 20%. These deaths were mainly driven by a rise in suicides and drug overdoses, Duggan and Li found.

These findings are in juxtaposition with the notion that more millennials were covered by health insurance.

Millennial identities

The report shows that millennials were more likely to identify as multiracial and to adopt unconventional gender identities.

But millennials embrace racial and gender stereotypes in a similar way to previous generations. According to the report, one-fifth of millennials still adopt traditional views of gender roles, nearly the same as the rates among Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, according to analysis of data from the General Social Survey between 1994 and 2016 and previous research from Stanford scholars.

Millennials are also equally likely as Gen Xers to believe that blacks are lazier than whites, according to analyses by sociologist Aliya Saperstein and sociology doctoral student Sasha Shen Johfre.

“When it comes to their identities, millennials are a truly innovative generation that is forging new options,” Grusky said. “But when it comes to their attitudes about race and gender, they’re just not as special.”

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