Regional deprivation, individual prospects, and political resentment

Giovanni Facchini, Anja Neundorf, Sergi Pardos-Prado and Cecilia Testa

No 2025-01, Discussion Papers from Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP)

Abstract: Regional economic conditions affect livelihoods and the geography of political resentment. Yet, individuals do not equally partake in their region’s economic fortunes, and their perceptions of relative deprivation need not be the same. Grievances are likely to be shaped not only by income disparities but also by how personal prospects are tied to regional conditions. We argue that the interaction between subjective individual and regional relative deprivation crucially affects perceptions of shared experience and systemic unfairness. Through a large-scale survey experiment in Britain, we provide causal evidence that poor individuals in poor regions express more political resentment due to diminished personal financial prospects and social status. In contrast, political attitudes among poor and wealthy individuals are indistinguishable in affluent regions. Our findings reveal how reference groups affect subjective perceptions of relative deprivation and highlight the importance of egocentric mechanisms, whereby the local economy shapes expectations of individual prospects.

Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/nicep ... ers/2025/2025-01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:not:notnic:2025-01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP) School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hilary Hughes ().