Gen Z, Gender and Covid-19

How do the youngest Americans view the impact of the Coronavirus and does a gender gap underlie those opinions? Using a national survey of Generation Z conducted in late-May of 2020, our study measures attitudes toward the impact of the Coronavirus on personal health, financial and job concerns, views about shelter-in-place laws, and voting intentions in the 2020 presidential election. We find that Gen Z women express greater health and economic concerns and support for shelter-in-place measures than their male counterparts but this gender gap is largely mitigated by party identification and other covariates. Party also mediates the differences between young male and female voters in regard to the influence of the Coronavirus on their vote choice in 2020. Notably, however, women regardless of party affiliation hold significantly greater concern toward the impact of COVID-19 on their personal financial situation. Yet we find that Gen Z men express more concern about their personal health amid COVID-19 in more fully-specified statistical models. This research contributes to the growing literature that examines not only the sorting effect of party on the gender gap, but how different identitiesa-in this case generationa-can help explain the persistent political divides between men and women.