Cohort size and youthful protest

The literature on youth protest & youth movements from the 1960s to the 1980s largely neglects demographic factors. It is shown here that changes in cohort size closely correspond with the rise of youthful protest in the US, Europe, & Japan. An increase in cohort size tends to weaken the traditional processes of secondary socialization, making peer group & subculture influences more important factors in shaping youth behavior. On the other hand, increases in cohort size have the tendency to create "structural bottlenecks," particularly in times of decreasing economic growth. Altered opportunities & social mobility, with concomitant frustration of expectations, relative deprivation, & ineffective secondary socialization, can result in protests of various kinds. Although sometimes penetrated by left-wing ideology & class struggle rhetoric, youth & student protest movements of recent years have not been grounded in traditional worker movements; rather, they have tended to be concerned more with Mc than Wc issues. Being sons & daughters of Mc parents whose upward mobility had been unusually great, their unusually high expectations for themselves were all the more drastically frustrated when they were confronted by the effects of large cohorts & an insufficiently expanding economy. Their parents had experienced quite different circumstances, ie, a strongly expanding economy without the bottlenecks created by large cohort sizes. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 32 References. Modified AA.