Youth Attitudes Towards Their Future: the Role of Resources, Agency and Individualism in the UK

Young adults tend to be more optimistic about the future than older people, even during social and economic crises such as those created by the COVID pandemic. In this paper, we analyse survey data from a previous economic crisis to examine why young adults remain optimistic about their personal futures, and to consider what lessons, if any, this can help us with thinking about a post-COVID future. The data in question are drawn from a unique cross-sectional survey of young adults aged 22–29 in England, Scotland and Wales conducted in 2014, when youth unemployment in the UK was still extraordinarily high. Using these data, we assess the effect of resources, agency and individualism on young adults’ optimism. Multiple regression models of these data show that individual resources and individual attitudes not only have an independent effect on levels of youth optimism, but they can also interact. In particular, we argue that self-efficacy is the strongest predictor of youth optimism, together with educational resources, but we also show that some youth attitudes (namely individualism) affect youth optimism in different ways, depending on the level of individual-level resources available to the young person. These findings highlight the complexity of understanding youth optimism and point us towards possibilities for supporting young adults in post-pandemic times.