Age and Arts Participation:
With A focus on the Baby Boom Cohort
Report 34: Executive Summary
This report presents two sets of analyses of the effect of age on adult arts participation in
seven benchmark or core art forms. The data which are analyzed herein are taken from the National
Endowment for the Arts' Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) which were conducted in
1982 and 1992. The SPPA provides important statistics on adult participation over this 10-year
period. These data document the changing composition of arts audiences in America; they provide a
snapshot in time of audiences for classical music, opera, ballet, musicals, jazz, plays, and art
museums.
Based on over 12,000 telephone and in-person interviews of adult Americans, each survey reveals
a pattern of participation by age and other demographics. Of special importance is the
participation of "cohorts," a group of individuals born at roughly the same time and thereby
sharing a variety of sociohistorical experiences. Insofar as the socializing experiences of a
cohort are unique, they will influence the rates of participation in some or all of the arts.
Moreover, the influences will persist as the cohort moves through the life cycle. While aging
effects take place over the life span for all individuals no matter when they were born,
cohort effects, when present, yield unique attendance patterns.
This report examines the participation of different cohorts between 1982 and 1992, with a
special look at the baby boomers generation. The results are important for all those concerned with
the arts in America today, especially the cultural institutions, their supporters, and policy
makers.
The Cohorts
The collective experience of an age group is of such importance that they have been broken down
into seven cohorts for this report's analysis and named according to the era in which they were
born:
Progressives: those born before 1916, aged 77 and older in 1992
Roaring '20s: those born between 1916 and 1925, aged 67-76
Depression: those born between 1926 and 1935, aged 57-66
World War II: those born between 1936 and 1945, aged 47-56
Early Boomers: those born between 1946 and 1955, aged 37-46
Late Boomers: those born between 1956 and 1965, aged 27-36
Baby Busters: those born between 1966 and 1976, aged 17-26, also known as
Generation X.
Highlights of Change in Cohort Attendance From 1982 to 1992
Classical Music. The raw data show that attendance at classical music
performances is highest among those born between 1936-1945 (the 47- to 56-year-olds in 1992) and
lowest in the oldest and youngest cohorts. When the data are adjusted for demographic and life
course events, the lower participation rates of the oldest cohort (born pre-1916) are, as might be
expected, a function of aging, whereas the decreased participation of younger cohorts shows a clear
cohort effect. This could signal problems for the future of live classical music if these younger
adults fail to mature into attendance. The truism that more educated people attend the arts more
often is no longer as valid. While the post-WW II cohorts are more educated than those adults that
came before them, the link between high levels of education and classical music attendance is not
as strong as it is in the earlier cohorts.
Opera. Looking at results adjusted for demographic and life course factors,
members of older cohorts comprise an even higher proportion of the opera audiences than was true
for classical music concertgoers. For example, the 1916-1925 cohort has higher rates of
participation than even the 1936-1945 cohort. As observed for classical music, operagoers are
underrepresented among the youngest adults. These results suggest that opera is a discipline with a
graying audience. In fact, there is a dramatic drop between the WW II cohort (1936-1945) and the
Early Boomers (1946-1955). Given this, it is unlikely that aging alone will induce these later
cohorts to mature into opera participation; more needs to be done to build a younger audience.
Ballet. The data reveal that younger cohorts are more likely to be found in the
audience for ballet performances than at the opera or at classical music concerts. Indeed, in the
unadjusted results, even the youngest cohorts attend the ballet at rates slightly above the most
active arts participants, the 47-to 56-year-olds. While younger adults are not attending as much as
expected-given their high levels of education, life course stage, income and other predictors-they
are attending at a rate comparable to older cohorts. If audiences mature into balletgoers, the
younger cohorts may eventually match their elders in terms of attendance.
Musicals. The overall rates of attendance at musicals are high compared to
rates of participation in the other art forms examined above, and yet cohort differences follow a
pattern much like that observed for classical music, with participation lower in the younger
cohorts. There seems to be a genuine cohort effect depressing attendance at musicals starting with
the older baby boom cohort and continuing through the youngest cohorts.
Jazz. The adjusted results show that attendance at jazz performances was much
higher among the younger cohorts, those aged 46 and younger, and that controls for demographic and
life stage factors have little impact on these cohort differences. This pattern of higher rates of
attendance at jazz concerts for adults born after WW II is very different from the patterns seen
for the other art forms examined thus far. The findings for jazz suggest that, as these young
cohorts replace older ones, it is expected that overall participation at jazz events will grow.
Plays. As was the case for the first four art forms, attendance at theatrical
plays is highest for the 1936-1945 cohort, which has significantly higher attendance rates compared
to all other cohorts in the raw data. The lowest reported participation, as expected, is found
among the oldest Americans, those born before 1916. The next cohort, 1916-1925, is also found to
attend fewer plays than do the 1926-1935, 1936-1945, and 1946-1955 cohorts. For plays, all of the
cohorts born before 1946 have significantly higher rates of attendance than the youngest adult
Americans. This "baby boom dividing line" suggests that cohort effects are responsible for the
difference. However, as was the case for musicals, overall adult participation is fairly high and
younger cohorts do not appear from this survey to be abandoning the discipline.
Art Museums. In contrast to the results obtained for other core art forms
discussed so far, the youngest cohort (1966-1975) ranks second in its high level of attendance at
art museums. Its rate is only exceeded fractionally by the Early Boomers, (1946-1955). The baby
boom dividing line noticeable in other art forms does not hold in the case of art museums. Overall,
the findings for art museums suggest that cohort differences have little to do with rates of
participation. Most of the unadjusted differences between cohorts are actually a function of life
course and demographic factors.
Novels. Data in this add-on category of the survey reveal that, as was the case
with art museums, the younger cohorts are the more active, but that this is a function of causes
other than age alone. The younger baby boomers reported reading more often than other cohorts
except the older boomers, thus making these two cohorts the most active consumers of this
particular form of artistic expression. Among the three pre-WW II cohorts, the data show that the
older the cohort, the less reading they do.
Life Course, Demographics, and Alternatives
Other analyses in this report show how specific cohorts have increased or decreased their
attendance at the benchmark art activities over this 10-year period and how life course and
demographic factors affect their participation. Life course influences have a direct and tangible
bearing on how often individuals are able to attend live artistic performances or exhibits, and
these effects vary with age. The report also shows that many are substituting alternative forms of
arts participation, such as television, cable and radio broadcasts, or through various recorded
media such as videotapes and compact discs (CDs) for live arts participation.
Education, Income, Children, and the Baby Boomers
As has been true historically, education and income are strong predictors of arts participation.
In every cohort, in every art form, those with more education and higher incomes participate at
higher rates than those with less. Nonetheless, there is an overall decline in adult arts
participation after the cohort born during World War II. The baby boomers are a surprise. Although
better educated than their predecessors, they have not kept up in terms of active participation in
the arts as would be expected. What accounts for this? Was the education the younger generation
received the same as that of their elders? Findings confirm that not only was it different, it did
not produce the same income.
Proportionately fewer baby boomers have advanced into top professional and high-salaried
positions, despite their advanced degrees. And basic costs, especially for housing, have increased
to the point that home ownership is difficult for middle-income adults, even with two wage earners
in a household. It may not be the lack of caring for culture nor lower incomes that keep baby
boomers-especially the younger ones-away from active participation in the arts. They may not have
the time nor money to attend, even if they have the inclination. They might be at home with the
children, in what little free time their work affords them for family life. Nonetheless, the data
show that, regardless of the presence or absence of children in the home, it is the 1936Ü1945
cohort which attends the core art forms at the highest rates among all adult Americans. Those in
the younger cohorts have reduced their attendance below the high levels attained by their elders at
the same age and presumably at the same stage of "full nest" family life.
The Ultimate Question
If the baby boomers and their successors, Generation X, tend to participate in most of the seven
core art forms at lower rates than their elders as examined in this report, what are they doing
instead? Without question, many of the baby boomers are participating in the core art forms and
popular arts, especially music, in ways that are not accounted for in these data. On that
assumption, it is no accident that their rates of participation are highest in jazz-the art form
closest to popular music-and in art museums, with which popular music competes least. If the nature
and location of that "other" participation could be determined with greater assurance, it might aid
the core arts organizations in developing strategies to lure nonparticipants away from their
present activities to those that might be considered more enriching of adults.
This report suggests that something should be done to ensure future audiences for the benchmark
art disciplines, the backbone of traditional American culture. The problem of nonattendance is
serious for a number of reasons, especially in its effect on earned income. This is compounded by
the fact that "unearned" support from public agencies and foundations, as well as from private
patrons, is becoming ever more competitive to obtain. In an increasingly hostile environment for
cultural endeavors, if the largest segment of the adult population-the baby boomers-turns away from
providing support and from participating actively in core art forms, the future of the arts is
indeed grim.
National Endowment for the Arts
webmgr@arts.endow.gov |