Generational Differences in the Labour Market – Three Confounded Effects

Objective: Many research claim that Millennials value work ethic much lower and leisure time much higher than older generations. Most of them are based on cross-sectional analyses of data collected at one time. This design confounds the COHORT effect (born in the same time period and thus exposed to the same cultural forces during their formative socialization period) and biological AGE, and it makes it impossible to separate them. Our goal is to demonstrate how to empirically separate the confounded effects of APC (biological AGE – PERIOD of measurement – COHORT) in a simple way. Methodology: Three generations (Baby Boomers, X-ers and Millennials) from the representative Polish samples of the World Value Survey, were cross-sectionally compared, and a cross-lagged comparison was made between BB in 2005 vs X in 2020, and between X in 2005 and Millennials in 2020. Findings: It was shown that significant cross-sectional differences in attitudes toward work between the 3 generation (with the highest score for Baby Boom-ers and the lowest for Millennials) cannot be explained by age differences. Over the period of 15 years, the importance of leisure time has increased for all generations (PERIOD effect). Value Added: The paper highlights significant methodological problem: the confounding effect of APC in most generational findings. It promotes the idea of using nationally representative samples from publicly available data like World Value Survey, instead of collecting convenience samples. Recommendations: Greater methodological rigour in generational studies is recommended, as their results can create/support stereotypes that tend to generate individual expectations (e.g. every Millennial is computer literate or lazy), ignoring the fact that intra-generational variability is very high.