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Numerous studies show that ruling parties paid a political price for the recent economic crisis. Yet the degree to which the most-affected households held the government accountable for their personal economic misfortune during the crisis remains an open question. Survey data from 21 countries in Europe and Central Asia show that individuals whose income was adversely affected by the crisis, who had to curtail spending to make ends meet, or who tried to increase their income were more likely to disapprove of incumbent governments than were those who were less directly affected. Panel data from the Netherlands confirms that drops in income during the crisis led to lower levels of government support. While politicians were held accountable for the crisis generally, households that suffered economic pain held their governments accountable for their losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a new age period cohort model to show that among cohorts born between 1935 and 1975, cohorts born around 1950 are significantly above the income trend in most countries. However, such inequalities between generations are much stronger in conservative, continental European welfare states, compared to social democratic and liberal welfare states. As we show, this is because conservative welfare states expose some cohorts to high youth unemployment and make lifetime earnings dependent on a favorable entry into the labor market. We thus demonstrate that conservative welfare states have put the burden of adjustment to the post-1975 economic slowdown on birth cohorts that could not get stable jobs before 1975, while similar cohort inequalities are much weaker in liberal and social democratic welfare states. In these latter two welfare regimes, the burden of adjustment to the post-1975 economic slowdown was not put on the shoulders of some cohorts relative to others. Our analysis is the first to show which welfare regimes are more conducive to such inequalities between cohorts and what mechanisms lead to these material cohort inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]