YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  51 Visions of the future are mainly undergoing polarization. In contrast to 2010, today’s share of young people that expects stability in the future, both personally and societally, has shrunk. The increasing share of young societal pessimists is especially worrying. Their pessimism is the result, primarily, of demographic aging fears and environmental concerns. The significant increase of young people that see society worsening in the future as compared to today (from 38% to 47%) is striking. What fu- els this pessimism? Data analysis suggests that two broader social issues are at play: aging demographics and environmental issues. Those that perceive aging demographics as a bigger problem are significantly more pessimistic (r = -0.12; p < 0.01), as are those that see environmental pol- lution as more problematic and irreversible (r = -0.14; p < 0.01). 1.3  VALUES AND YOUTH BELIEFS ABOUT THE FAMILY The “family life” value has been one of the most important values among young people since at least the year 2000. 64% of young people assign the highest score (5, on a scale from 1 to 5) to this value. Women perceive it as significantlymore important (t (1197) = -6.21; p<0.01;M=4.66; SD=0.68) than men (M = 4.39; SD = 0.79), which suggests people still think of fam- ily as more in the domain of women. In this respect, gender differences have not been narrowing in the past two decades. Quite the contrary, in 2000 the mean difference between men and women was tilted by 4% in favour of women, while in 2020 this has increased to 6%. The same somewhat re-traditionalizing trend of gender roles can be seen in a mild, yet statistically significant (t (1198) = 3.490; p < 0.01), trend of increased agreement with the claim that most household chores naturally befit women more than men (Figure 1.9).