Intergenerational blame attribution - a consequence of the perceived personal post-crisis economy of youth in Sweden?

Abstract: Motivated by recent claims from youth that older generations are jeopardizing their future, the purpose of this thesis is to study potential explanations for the variation of intergenerational blame attribution among Swedish youth. Ordinary least squares regression analysis is conducted on survey data, especially focused on young participants, to test several hypotheses about how perceived economic threats and one’s value orientation can impact young people’s motivation to blame elderly generations for economic difficulties. The thesis does not find statistical support that one’s birth cohort - used as a proxy for childhood socialization during different economic conditions - moderates the effect of perceived threat on intergenerational blame attribution. However, when a person’s value orientation is explicitly measured in a regression model, the findings indicate that characteristics acquired earlier in life can alter a person’s reaction to presently perceived threats. The result shows that authoritarians are more prone to attribute blame towards older generations as a matter of habit, but also that libertarians are susceptible to changing their attitudes to liken authoritarians given a tangible threat. Furthermore, the study provides empirical evidence suggesting that libertarians and authoritarians react to perceived economic threats differently. These findings are evaluated in relation to measuring perceived threat in a survey context and the linear interaction effect assumption in multiplicative linear models.