Young Brazilians from 16 to 25 years of age might be the generation to pick up the public service torch that older adults, over 40 years old, believe they dropped.

A Datafolha survey performed in August shows that from all age groups, millennials are the ones most interested in working with politics be it running for office or working for the government.

Among the respondents, 29% of those between 16 and 25 say they have much or somewhat interest in trying their luck in an election. However, older groups felt differently. From 26 to 40, 19% of respondents answered the same way. Above 41, the rate is 15%.

The trend continued when the question was about working for the government, but without having to be elected to the position. While the group from 16 to 25 had 34% people saying they are interested in the possibility, among respondents between 26 to 40 years old the proportion was 30% and only 23% of respondents over 40 said the same thing.

But all age groups had one thing in common: the great majority of respondents in all of them say they have no interest in working with public service.

Datafolha interviewed 2,086 people in 128 cities (margin of error of 2% either up or down).  

Even when they claimed to have some interest in politics, a good part of people who were young during the period of democracy reinstatement, during the 1980s and 1990s, remained apart from the formal public sphere.

^{Translated by NATASHA MADOV}

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