Recession experiences during early adulthood shape prosocial attitudes later in life
Bietenbeck, Jan LU ; Uwe, Sunde and Thiemann, Petra LU
(2025)
In Journal of Public Economics
243.
- Abstract
- 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.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/56d16b42-11f9-4cbc-9b14-2470edfcb813
- author
- Bietenbeck, Jan
LU
; Uwe, Sunde
and Thiemann, Petra
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-03
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Prosocial attitudes, Impressionable ye ars, Experience effects, Cohort effects, D91, E30, E71
- in
- Journal of Public Economics
- volume
- 243
- article number
- 105327
- pages
- 9 pages
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85217916834
- ISSN
- 0047-2727
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105327
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 56d16b42-11f9-4cbc-9b14-2470edfcb813
- date added to LUP
- 2025-03-18 10:47:59
- date last changed
- 2025-06-23 09:55:08
@article{56d16b42-11f9-4cbc-9b14-2470edfcb813,
abstract = {{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.}},
author = {{Bietenbeck, Jan and Uwe, Sunde and Thiemann, Petra}},
issn = {{0047-2727}},
keywords = {{Prosocial attitudes; Impressionable ye ars; Experience effects; Cohort effects; D91; E30; E71}},
language = {{eng}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Journal of Public Economics}},
title = {{Recession experiences during early adulthood shape prosocial attitudes later in life}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105327}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.jpubeco.2025.105327}},
volume = {{243}},
year = {{2025}},
}