The education angle is not specific to age.
There is strong evidence from different quarters that the Leave vote is inextricably linked to lower levels of education, skills, income and employment. From the Rowntree Foundation, local voting figures obtained by the BBC, to Lord Ashcroft’s exit poll - the data is consistent.
One piece of research by Leicester uni found that education was the key factor. Going so far as to say that Britain would have likely voted to Remian were its population educated to a slightly higher level.
Researchers calculated that if 3% more of the population gone to uni, we would likely not be leaving. They found that uni or other HE was the ‘predominant factor’ in how people voted.
Not commenting on the legitimacy of their argument, haven’t looked at it in detail, simply reporting their findings.
Ironically, the Leave campaign was clear of their target audience. A senior backroom campaigner was reported to have said: ’our people are the old, the badly educated and the poor’.
All this doesn’t explain your parents with their economics degrees, who had the tools to identify the black holes in the economic argument for Leave such as it was. But the specious sovereignty argument seduced quite a few.