Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:38:36.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Paul R. Abramson  and
Ronald Inglehart
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Surveys sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities are employed to study value change in West Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy between 1970–71 and 1990 and in Denmark and Ireland between 1973 and 1990. During these years generational replacement had a major impact on value trends in all eight societies. In Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark generational replacement contributed to the growth of Postmaterialism, and in France, Italy and Ireland replacement was the major force creating the trend towards Postmaterialism. Even in Belgium, where there was only a slight move towards Postmaterialism, replacement may have prevented a movement towards Materialism. For the European public as a whole, replacement contributed to the growth of Postmaterialism. However, the impact of replacement is likely to be smaller in the coming two decades because relatively low birth rates during the late 1970s and the 1980s will contribute to lower rates of generational replacement.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 183 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Since the Fall 1990 EuroBarometer study, surveys of Germany have included what used to comprise East Germany. As our analyses end with the Spring 1990 EuroBarometer, all of our survey data are based upon West Germany. In addition, our demographic statistics are based upon censuses of West Germany.

2 See Inglehart, Ronald, ‘The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post- Industrial Societies’, American Political Science Review, 65 (1971), 991–1017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Inglehart, Ronald, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

4 Sample surveys in Luxembourg began in 1973 and in Northern Ireland in 1976, but these samples have been relatively small. Greece has been surveyed from 1980 onward and surveys began in Spain and Portugal in 1986. The time series provided by Greece, Spain and Portugal are not long enough to analyse the impact of generational replacement.

5 See Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

6 See Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

7 For a summary, see Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

8 See Abramson, Paul R. and Inglehart, Ronald, ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Six West European Societies’, American Journal of Political Science, 30 (1986), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

9 See Inglehart, Ronald, ‘Post-Materialism in an Environment of Insecurity’, American Political Science Review, 75 (1981), 880–900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 We combine results for 1970 and 1971 to be consistent with the results presented by Inglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar For all subsequent reports we present results according to single years. For 1977, 1978 and for 1980 through 1989, we combine the results of two surveys. All of the surveys employed up to the spring of 1989 were, at the time of this writing, available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Fall 1989 and Spring 1990 surveys are scheduled to be made available through the Consortium.

11 See Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution.Google Scholar

12 Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution, ‘Post-Materialism in an Environment of Insecurity’.Google Scholar

13 See Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

14 More specifically, the percentage difference index is equivalent to a mean that assigns each Postmaterialist a score of 100, each respondent with mixed values a score of 0 and each Materialist a score of – 100.

15 We employ a product moment correlation entering the annual inflation rate for each year as the independent variable and the PDI score for that year as the dependent variable. We have reflected the score on our value index so that a positive correlation indicates that an increase in inflation is associated with a rise in Materialism. The inflation rate is the year-to-year change in the consumer price index. We used the annual consumer price index in each country as reported by the Statistical Office of the European Communities. In Germany, the correlation between changing inflation rates and change in the PDI is 0.76; in Britain it is 0.63; in the Netherlands, 0.87; in France, 0.65; in Italy, 0.82; in Denmark, 0.86; and in Ireland it is 0.71. Even in Belgium, it is 0.33.

16 Only in Denmark (where the correlation fell to 0.66) did the results change substantially when a one-year lag for inflation rates was employed. The relationship in Belgium rose to 0.40 when a one-year lag for inflation rates was employed, but the correlation was still much lower for Belgium than for any of the other seven countries.

17 See Inglehart, , ‘The Silent Revolution in Europe’; The Silent Revolution; Culture Shift.Google Scholar

18 See Abramson, Paul R. and Inglehart, Ronald, ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 1991, Table Al).Google Scholar

19 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies’Google Scholar, Tables A2 through A9. These tables can be used to approximate the number of cases upon which the results in Tables 2 through 9 of this article are based.

20 See Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution.Google Scholar

21 See Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution: Culture Shift.Google Scholar

22 We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. The bottom-line statistic we report is based upon the mean relationship for all seventeen survey years.

23 Rintala, Marvin, The Constitution of Silence: Essays on Generational Themes (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979), p. 8.Google Scholar

24 Differential death rates can lead to problems in tracking cohorts when they reach old age since Postmaterialists (who have higher levels of education and income) tend to live longer than Materialists. As their social composition changes older cohorts can become more Postmaterialist. Our analyses of educational levels among cohorts as they age suggest that by 1983 differential death rates were affecting the composition of the 1906–15 cohort, and in our analysis of replacement effects we do not use the results for this cohort after 1982. After 1973, we no longer employ results for the cohort born before 1906.

25 The full ten-year cohort is not actually sampled until 1980, however.

26 Glenn, Norval D., Cohort Analysis (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977).Google Scholar

27 See, for example, Shively, W. Phillips, ‘Review of Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society’, Journal of Politics, 53 (1991), 235–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Shively argues that Inglehart's analyses do not demonstrate that age-group differences result from generational effects since his analyses do not definitively reject a life-cycle interpretation.

28 See Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

29 For an example of such an attempt, see Böltken, Ferdinand and Jagodzinski, Wolfgang, ‘In an Environment of Insecurity: Postmaterialism in the European Community, 1970 to 1980’, Comparative Political Studies, 17 (1985), 453–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Once again, we employ OLS estimates. For these estimates, we track the 1956–65 cohort from 1980 through 1990, since the full ten-year cohort is not sampled until 1980. For Denmark and Ireland, we track the 1906–15 cohort between 1973 and 1982.

31 This procedure for estimating change over time was introduced by Converse, Philip E., The Dynamics of Party Support: Cohort-Analyzing Party Identification (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976).Google Scholar

32 See Abramson, Paul R., Political Attitudes in America: Formation and Change (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983).Google Scholar

33 For Denmark and Ireland we use the proportion of respondents in each cohort in 1973 as our base.

34 See Abramson, , Political Attitudes.Google Scholar

35 In making these estimates, our main problem is assigning a value to cohorts that no longer are included in our matrix. As there is little evidence that cohorts become more partisan as they age, we assign the value based upon their scores for the last two survey years displayed in our cohort matrix. For Denmark and Ireland we base our value for the cohort born before 1906 on the PDI score in the 1973 survey.

36 See Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

37 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Six West European Societies’Google Scholar; Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and the Future of Post- Materialist Values’, Journal of Politics, 49 (1987), 231–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inglehart, , ‘Aggregate Stability and Individual-Level Flux in Mass Belief Systems: The Level of Analysis Paradox’, American Political Science Review, 79 (1985), 97–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

38 See Inglehart, , Culture Shift.Google Scholar

39 If we use a one-year lag to estimate the impact of inflation rates upon values, the correlation drops marginally to 0.78.

40 Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies’Google Scholar, Table A10.

41 Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies’Google Scholar, Table A11.

42 As with our earlier estimates, the major problem we face is assigning a value score for cohorts too old to appear in our matrix. After 1973, we no longer present results for the cohort born before 1906. We set the value for that cohort according to the mean of its index scores for the 1970–71 and the 1973 surveys. After 1982, we no longer utilize results for the 1906–15 cohort. We assign a value to this cohort based upon the mean of its index scores for 1981 and 1982.

45 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Six West European Societies’Google Scholar; ‘Generational Replacement and the Future of Post-Materialist Values’.

44 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and the Future of Post-Materialist Values’.Google Scholar

45 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and the Future of Post-Materialist Values’.Google Scholar The reason that we underpredicted the growth of Postmaterialism is readily apparent from the results in Table 11. All six cohorts that can be tracked between 1985 and 1990 moved towards Postmaterialism. As we made clear in our earlier analysis, we can estimate future population replacement but cannot estimate future period effects.

46 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and the Future of Post-Materialist Values’.Google Scholar

47 We should remind our readers that these projections were based upon the West German population.

48 See Abramson, and Inglehart, , ‘Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies’, Table A10.Google Scholar

49 We also made similar projections based upon the mean of the cohort values for 1988, 1989 and 1990. These projections are only negligibly different from the results we present in Figure 11.

50 For surveys between 1970–71 and 1979 we compare the 1946–55 cohort with the 1936–45 cohort; for surveys between 1980 and 1990, we compare the 1956–65 cohort with the 1946–55 cohort.

51 Based upon comparisons between 1980 and 1990, the only years for which full ten-year cohorts can be compared.