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Jan Bietenbeck . Photo

Jan Bietenbeck

Senior lecturer

Jan Bietenbeck . Photo

Recession experiences during early adulthood shape prosocial attitudes later in life

Author

  • Jan Bietenbeck
  • Sunde Uwe
  • Petra Thiemann

Summary, in English

This paper explores whether the experience of a recession during early adulthood shapes individuals’ prosocial attitudes. The analysis uses survey responses to experimentally validated questions that measure prosocial attitudes for approximately 64,000 respondents in 74 countries. The identification approach exploits variation in recession experiences across 75 different birth cohorts. We find that exposure to a recession during early adulthood is associated with lower levels of prosociality later in life. The effect only emerges for experiences during the impressionable years (age 18–25), mainly affects prosocial attitudes among men, and is orthogonal to the effect of experiences with democracy.

Department/s

  • Centre for Economic Demography
  • Department of Economics

Publishing year

2025-03

Language

English

Publication/Series

Journal of Public Economics

Volume

243

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Economics

Keywords

  • Prosocial attitudes
  • Impressionable ye ars
  • Experience effects
  • Cohort effects
  • D91
  • E30
  • E71

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0047-2727