{"id":862,"date":"2006-03-09T09:12:32","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T17:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2006\/03\/do_we_age_into_arts_attendance\/"},"modified":"2006-03-09T09:12:32","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T17:12:32","slug":"do_we_age_into_arts_attendance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/do_we_age_into_arts_attendance.php","title":{"rendered":"Do we &#8221;age into&#8221; arts attendance?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a comment to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/007707.php\">my post yesterday<\/a> about demographic shifts in the labor market, a weblog reader asked the essential question:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><br \/>\nWon&#8217;t the aging Boomers come into the demographic that attends cultural events? Older, empty nesters with education and assets? Or are they too glued to their TV&#8217;s?<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a common question and a core issue for the future of the professional arts infrastructure, described more specifically in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nea.gov\/pub\/Researcharts\/Summary42.html\">this 1997 report summary<\/a> from the National Endowment for the Arts:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><br \/>\nOne expectation is that [baby boomers] will &#8221;age into&#8221; arts participation as they embrace midlife obligations and perspectives. The alternative prediction is that the lower level of arts participation is a consequence of their early liberal experience and will persist over the coming decades, while post-boomer cohorts, raised in a more conservative atmosphere, will enjoy levels of arts participation comparable to pre-boomers.<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Why does it matter? If age is really a primary predictor of arts attendance, we&#8217;re all in the gravy as the big population bubble moves into the &#8221;arts attending&#8221; years. If factors <i>other than<\/i> age are the primary predictors of attendance (life experience, arts exposure as a child), we&#8217;re in trouble, because we&#8217;ll be drawing a decreasing percentage of the larger pool.<\/p>\n<p>So what do we know about the answer? Not much until we can measure it in &#8221;real time.&#8221; The NEA study offered a gloomy perspective on what we might expect:<\/p>\n<p><i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Among post-boomers, it was only for jazz that a few respondents account for the cohorts&#8217; attendance. For all the rest of the art forms, a larger number of Generation X attendees attended fewer times on average. This means a large number of people were sampling widely.\n<li>For baby boomers generally, a large number of attendees attend infrequently and this trend grew more pronounced from 1982 to 1997. That means that these boomers, like the post-boomers noted above, tend to sample widely without showing a strong commitment to any arts form.\n<li>In marked contrast, the attendance figures for pre-boomers are accounted for largely by the frequent attendance of a relatively few people in these cohorts.\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, only time will tell how worried we should be. But we might as well start worrying now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a comment to my post yesterday about demographic shifts in the labor market, a weblog reader asked the essential question: Won&#8217;t the aging Boomers come into the demographic that attends cultural events? Older, empty nesters with education and assets? Or are they too glued to their TV&#8217;s? It&#8217;s a common question and a core [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}