Social mobility and populist values

Sergio Perelman and Pierre Pestieau
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Pierre Pestieau: Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium

No 2023014, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: Despite some successes in Europe, the welfare state has not been able to renew itself to meet the challenge of various social divides. The major source of these divides is undoubtedly the failure of the social elevator. One might conjecture that the welfare state has probably been too preoccupied with income inequality and poverty and not enough with social mobility. To support this hypothesis, it is important to have good measures of intergenerational mobility and of populist attitudes to compare them with indicators of redistribution. If redistribution and social mobility are indeed found to be negatively correlated, this would invalidate the famous Gatsby Curve. In this paper, we rely on the several waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) to elicit indicators of mobility and of populism and show how the lack of social mobility can explain populist attitudes across a number of European countries.

Keywords: Populism; social mobility; education policy; Gatsby curve (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H20 H31 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2023-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2023014

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