The Liberalization of American Attitudes to Homosexuality and the Impact of Age, Period, and Cohort Effects

Abstract

Abstract Prior analyses of age, period, and cohort effects in American attitudes to homosexuality have resulted in conflicting findings. I show that this is due to insufficient attention to the statistical identification problem facing such analyses. By means of more than four decades worth of survey data and two attitudinal measures taping social tolerance of homosexuality, I demonstrate that the conflicting results of prior research can be explained by differences in the implicit and unsubstantiated assumptions made to ensure model identification. To make up for the lack of attention to these assumptions in prior work, I discuss which age, period, and cohort effects we might expect to see based on prior knowledge about the case at hand, socialization theory, and research on how aging affects outgroup attitudes. On that basis, I also discuss which conclusions about age, period, and cohort effects we can actually draw in the case at hand. On a more general level, this article joins a growing literature that cautions against age-period-cohort analysis that does not give sufficient attention to theoretical expectations and side information when making the identifying assumptions on which the analysis must unavoidably rest.