Intergenerational Economic Opportunity as a Driver of Political Preferences?

This article complements the nascent literature on social status as a driver of political preferences with an intergenerational perspective. We examine political responses to "status discordance", which we conceptualize as the divergence between status expectations formed during childhood and actual status outcomes realized in adulthood. Our innovative operationalization of this concept relies on prediction models to create empirical estimates of status expectations based on respondents’ parental background. Relying on German panel data, our analysis demonstrates that political dissatisfaction is widespread among voters who end up lower than expected in the social hierarchy. They have a much higher probability of (1) abstaining and (2) voting for radical anti-establishment parties than voters whose social mobility experience follows childhood expectations.