Fear of Impending Demographic Change

As we outline in an earlier post, we asked respondents in our survey to consider the consequences of impending future demographic change. The scale is assembled from several items concerning the effect that immigration and racial/ethnic diversity in general might have on America’s culture and economy in the future. We built the scale first by presenting survey respondents with an illustration of America’s demographic future based on Census analyses on the subject. We prefaced the battery by telling respondents:

“As you may know, Census projections show that by 2043 African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other mixed racial and ethnic groups will together be a majority of the population. Thinking about the likely impact of this coming demographic change, how much do you agree or disagree with each of these statements?”

That illustration was followed by these statements, with which respondents could strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree:

Americans will learn more from one another and be enriched by exposure to many different cultures.

There will be too many demands on government services.

There will not be enough jobs for everybody.

We then assembled the Fear of Demographic Change scale from these items. Respondents who strongly agreed with the first statement were given the “least fearful” score for that item while those who strongly disagreed with the first statement were given the “most fearful” score for that item. Respondents who “strongly agreed” with the second and third statements were given those items’ “most fearful” scores, while respondents who “strongly disagreed” with statements two and three were given the “least fearful” scores. Intermediate answers fell in between on that scale.

Across the urban/suburban/rural divide, respondents were more divided by party than by urban/suburban/rural status. Democrats overall scored lower on the Fear of Demographic Change scale than Republicans by an amount outside the margin of error, and rural and suburban Democrats were below the overall sample proportion in those geographies.