GINI DP 91: An ever wider gap in an ever closer Union. Rising inequalities and euroscepticism in 12 West European democracies, 1976-2008

T. Kuhn, E. van Elsas, A. Hakhverdian and W. van der Brug

GINI Discussion Papers from AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies

Abstract: This article asks whether the trend towards greater inequality in European countries has led to an increase in euroscepticism. Traditionally among the most equal societies, West European countries have recently witnessed a stark increase in income inequality. European integration is often presented as one of the main driving factors of this development. This raises the question whether Europeans blame the EU for the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and consequently develop eurosceptic attitudes. A multilevel analysis of over 79 pooled Eurobarometer survey waves across 12 countries from 1975 to 2009 confirms that increasing income inequality boosts euroscepticism especially among the low educated. The findings are consistent with previous research on the link between income inequality and democratic legitimacy. They also provide empirical support for a new educational divide in the wake of European integration and globalization, and deepen our knowledge on the predictors of EU support.

Date: 2013-08
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www1.feb.uva.nl/aias/91-5-1-13.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www1.feb.uva.nl:443 (No such host is known. )

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:aia:ginidp:91

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GINI Discussion Papers from AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiemer Salverda ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).