Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes?

Uwe Sunde and Rainer Kotschy

No 17624, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on how demography affects democratic attitudes in Western democracies. Using individual survey responses, the empirical analysis disentangles age from cohort patterns and other contemporaneous economic and political influences that shape democratic attitudes. The results reveal that support for democracy increases with age and is lower for more recent birth cohorts. These patterns are more pronounced in Western democracies than in the former Eastern bloc and in other countries around the world. Additional findings document that demography’s effect partly captures heterogeneity in experiences with democracy, and that socioeconomic factors impact democratic attitudes.

Keywords: Population ageing; Modernization hypothesis; Support for democracy; Demographic composition; Stability of democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O17 O43 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17624 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes? (2022)
Working Paper: Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes? (2022)
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:cpr:ceprdp:17624

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17624

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().