Chronos Politics? Changing Demographics, Social Conflict and the Welfare State

• In Event: 594 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Social Citizenship

Abstract

It has become increasingly common to hear people say that this generation's young people will be the first generation in over a century to end up worse off than the generation that preceded them. There are those that attribute fault to a generation of baby boomers acting in their own interest, at the expense of generations that came before and after them. Some describe this as the emergence of a ``Chronos Politics'' (Hernes 1987, quoted in Esping-Andersen and Sarasa 2002). In this paper, we begin to explore whether there is any evidence that Chronos Politics are occurring. Chronos Politics is made up of both age and cohort power effects. Preliminary analysis suggests that there is some evidence for a non-negligible age-power effect on a handful of welfare state spending outcomes.

Authors

• Jason O. Jensen, McGill University

• Charles A. Plante, McGill University