{"id":237423,"date":"2026-04-30T08:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/americans-care-more-about-future-generations-than-many-think-and-that-gap-could-matter-for-policy\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T09:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T13:35:14","slug":"americans-care-more-about-future-generations-than-many-think-and-that-gap-could-matter-for-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/americans-care-more-about-future-generations-than-many-think-and-that-gap-could-matter-for-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans care more about future generations than many think \u2013 and that gap could matter for policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans care more about future generations than many think \u2013 and that gap could matter for policy<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/theconversation.com\/americans-care-more-about-future-generations-than-many-think-and-that-gap-could-matter-for-policy-280315<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-30 08:32:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Caring about future generations means believing that people who will live decades or centuries from now deserve ethical consideration. In practice, that means taking their interests into account when making all kinds of decisions across a range of issues \u2013 from aggressively cutting carbon emissions to investing in pandemic preparedness initiatives and regulating powerful emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n

While it may sound like a niche moral view to care about future generations in this way, our new research, published in the academic journal Futures, suggests otherwise. In fact, Americans appear to care substantially about future generations. Nevertheless, they also systematically underestimate how much other Americans care. <\/p>\n

To study this, we conducted two online surveys of U.S. adults, totaling 1,000 respondents. The samples were built to roughly match the U.S. population in age, gender, race or ethnicity, and political affiliation. In one survey, people told us their own views about future generations. In the other, a different group told us what they thought the average American believes. <\/p>\n

We examined this in three ways. First, we asked how many future generations people think society should keep in mind when making collective decisions. For example, when setting climate targets or designing pandemic response systems, how many future generations should count as stakeholders in that decision? Second, we asked how many future generations elected officials should keep in mind when making decisions about laws and public policy. Third, we asked how far into the future people still deserve \u201cmoral concern.\u201d <\/p>\n

For the third question, participants were shown a list of the present generation and the next 50 generations, with each generation defined as a 25-year period. They then indicated how many of those generations still belonged inside their \u201cmoral circle.\u201d In plain terms: If someone will live 100, 200, or even 1,000 years…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans care more about future generations than many think \u2013 and that gap could matter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/731574\/original\/file-20260422-71-ejrfr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C500%2C6000%2C3000&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-237423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237425,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237423\/revisions\/237425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}