The Hidden Costs of Decades of Declining Civics Education

It’s widely known that young adults in the United States tend to vote at lower rates than older Americans, but it’s easy to gloss over just how stunning the numbers really are especially at a time of such intense political polarization and divisiveness. Only half of the eligible adults between the ages of 18 and 29voted in the 2016 presidential election that sent Donald Trump to the White House. During the 2014 midterm elections two years earlier, the youth-voter-turnout rate was just 20 percent, the lowest ever recorded in history, according to an analysis of Census data.