Eur Polit Sci (2019) 18:510–531

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-018-0186-3

RESEARCH DATASET

Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑

and generation‑comparative approach

Jale Tosun1 · José L. Arco‑Tirado2 · Maurizio Caserta3 · Zeynep Cemalcilar4 ·

Markus Freitag5 · Felix Hörisch1 · Carsten Jensen6 · Bernhard Kittel7 ·
Levente Littvay8 · Martin Lukeš9 · William A. Maloney10 · Monika Mühlböck7 ·
Emily Rainsford10 · Carolin Rapp11 · Bettina Schuck12 · Jennifer Shore13 ·
Nadia Steiber14 · Nebi Sümer15 · Panos Tsakloglou16 · Mihaela Vancea17 ·
Federico Vegetti18

Published online: 10 September 2018

© The Author(s) 2018, corrected publication 2018

Abstract Existing datasets provided by statistical agencies (e.g. Eurostat) show

that the economic and financial crisis that unfolded in 2008 significantly impacted
the lives and livelihoods of young people across Europe. Taking these official sta-
tistics as a starting point, the collaborative research project “Cultural Pathways to

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https​://doi.org/10.1057/

s4130​4-018-0186-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

* Jale Tosun
jale.tosun@ipw.uni‑heidelberg.de
José L. Arco‑Tirado
jlarco@go.ugr.es
Maurizio Caserta
maurizio.caserta@gmail.com
Zeynep Cemalcilar
zcemalcilar@ku.edu.tr
Markus Freitag
markus.freitag@ipw.unibe.ch
Felix Hörisch
felix.hoerisch@ipw.uni‑heidelberg.de
Carsten Jensen
carstenj@ps.au.dk
Bernhard Kittel
bernhard.kittel@univie.ac.at
Levente Littvay
Littvayl@ceu.edu
Martin Lukeš
martin.lukes@vse.cz
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 511

Economic Self-Sufficiency and Entrepreneurship in Europe” (CUPESSE) gener-

ated new survey data on the economic and social situation of young Europeans (18–
35 years). The CUPESSE dataset allows for country-comparative assessments of
young people’s perceptions about their socio-economic situation. Furthermore, the
dataset includes a variety of indicators examining the socio-economic situation of
both young adults and their parents. In this data article, we introduce the CUPESSE
dataset to political and social scientists in an attempt to spark a debate on the meas-
urements, patterns and mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of economic
self-sufficiency as well as its political implications.

Keywords Economic self-sufficiency · Europe · Parents · Transmission · Youth ·

Survey data

William A. Maloney
william.maloney@newcastle.ac.uk
Monika Mühlböck
mo.muehlboeck@univie.ac.at
Emily Rainsford
Emily.Rainsford@newcastle.ac.uk
Carolin Rapp
mail@carolinrapp.com
Bettina Schuck
bettina.schuck@ipw.uni‑heidelberg.de
Jennifer Shore
Jennifer.shore@mzes.uni‑mannheim.de
Nadia Steiber
steiber@ihs.ac.at
Nebi Sümer
nsumer@metu.edu.tr
Panos Tsakloglou
tsaklog@aueb.gr
Mihaela Vancea
mihaela.vancea@upf.edu
Federico Vegetti
vegetti.fede@gmail.com
1
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Bergheimer Strasse 58, 69115 Heidelberg,
Germany
2
University of Granads, Avda. del Hospicio, 18071 Granada, Spain
3
University of Catania, Piazza Università, 2, 95124 Catania, CT, Italy
4
Koc University, 34450 Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey
512 J. Tosun et al.

Introduction

The concept of economic self-sufficiency features prominently in many international

organisations’ publications (e.g. Hetling et al. 2016). The Organisation for Eco-
nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, provides an aggregate-
level definition of self-sufficiency, which concentrates on the “extent of participation
in the economy and society and how well individuals are able to get through daily
life on their own” (OECD 2007: 21). In terms of measurement, the OECD refers
to the overall employment rate, the share of the population in jobless households,
the average number of years of schooling and the average school performance of
children at age 15. In addition to this general concept of economic self-sufficiency,
there exist more specific definitions reflecting the characteristics of particular target
groups (Gowdy and Pearlmutter 1993). Despite the prominence it gained, the con-
cept of economic self-sufficiency has also been criticised for being difficult to define
and even more difficult to evaluate (Leibson 2005).
Although conceptualising and measuring economic self-sufficiency is challeng-
ing, it warrants closer attention due to its immediate implications for an important
topic in political science: attitudes towards welfare state and redistribution (Alesina
and Giuliano 2011; Svallfors 2012). Citizens’ preferences for redistributive policies
can be traced back to both economic self-interest and personal beliefs (Alesina and
Giuliano 2011; Dion and Birchfield 2010; Jost 2006). Furthermore, individuals draw
inferences about the degree of inequality and poverty in society from their immedi-
ate social context, such as family and friends. These inferences, in turn, can shape
attitudes towards welfare provision and redistribution (Dawtry et al. 2015). Learning

5
Institute of Political Science, University of Bern, Fabrikstrasse 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
6
Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 7, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
7
University of Vienna, Oskar‑Morgenstern‑Platz 1, 1090 Vienna, Austria
8
Central European University, Nador u. 9, Budapest 1051, Hungary
9
Department of Entrepreneurship, University of Economics, Prague, W. Churchill Sq. 4,
13067 Prague 3, Czech Republic
10
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
11
University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark
12
Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Bergheimerstr. 20, Heidelberg, Germany
13
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, MZES,
68131 Mannheim, Germany
14
Institute for Advanced Studies, Josefstädter Str. 39, 1080 Vienna, Austria
15
Middle East Technical University, B236 Social Sciences Building, 06800 Ankara, Turkey
16
International and European Economic Studies, Athens University of Economics and Business,
76 Patission Str., 10434 Athens, Greece
17
Pompeu Fabra University, Plaça de la Mercè, 10, 08002 Barcelona, Spain
18
Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, Via Conservatorio 7,
20122 Milan, Italy
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 513

more about young people’s perceptions of their own economic self-sufficiency is

therefore crucial for understanding the social and attitudinal bases of their prefer-
ences in such a central policy domain.
The collaborative research project “Cultural Pathways to Economic Self-Suffi-
ciency and Entrepreneurship in Europe” (CUPESSE) funded by the European Com-
mission from February 2014 to January 2018 focused on young adults, their eco-
nomic situation and their values and attitudes regarding work and education (Tosun
et al. 2018).1 While an extremely heterogeneous group with a variety of different
needs, young people face considerable challenges and risks in terms of transition-
ing from school to work, entering the labour market and, ultimately, attaining some
form of economic self-sufficiency. Many of the risks and hurdles young people must
navigate along their journey to adulthood were simply not present, or at least not to
the same degree, when their parents and grandparents were their age (O’Reilly et al.
2015).
Traditionally, in the European Union (EU), youth unemployment has mostly been
a more acute issue in the Southern European countries, but the 2008 financial cri-
sis and the subsequent sovereign debt crises have exacerbated the situation across
Europe (see Lahusen et al. 2013; O’Reilly et al. 2015; Tosun et al. 2014, 2016, 2017;
Tosun 2017). Spells of unemployment early in life are likely to leave scars, which
can also affect later employment prospects (Dvouletý et al. 2018). Unemployment
may also have an impact on political socialisation and patterns of political behaviour
(Albacete 2014; Emmenegger et al. 2017; Neundorf et al. 2013).
Many young Europeans hold precarious jobs and must therefore rely on the eco-
nomic support of their parents. Baranowska-Rataj et al. (2016) highlight this in the
UK, where employment became increasingly precarious between the 1990s and the
start of the 2000s, particularly for (young) men with low educational qualifications.
This type of employment (e.g. through zero-hour contracts or fixed-term contracts)
reduces young people’s economic autonomy and increases their financial vulnerabil-
ity. Moreover, precarious working conditions can also affect political attitudes with
regard to welfare and redistributive preferences.
In this article, we present the CUPESSE dataset and discuss its relevance for
political economy and political sociology. We first introduce the measurement
approach developed by the consortium to assess young people’s perceptions of their
economic self-sufficiency. Second, we contrast young people’s economic situations
with their parents in order to gain initial insights into whether intergenerational dif-
ferences exist. Third, we compare young people’s attitudes with their parents’ atti-
tudes about two interrelated social policy domains: welfare benefits and universal
basic income. Lastly, we look at the correlates of young respondents’ attitudes using
multiple regression analysis and offer some concluding remarks.

1
The CUPESSE dataset including the full documentation of the data can be obtained from the GESIS
data archive: https​://searc​h.gesis​.org/resea​rch_data/ZA747​5. The dataset for replicating the analysis pre-
sented in this paper can be accessed from the European Political Science homepage.
514 J. Tosun et al.

Conceptual considerations for surveying two generations

Two strands of research motivate our interest in comparing the attitudes of

young people with those of their parents. First, the literature in political science
has provided extensive insights into generational differences with regard to atti-
tudes towards political institutions and policies as well as political participation
(e.g. Melo and Stockemer 2014; Abendschön and Tausendpfund 2017). A recent
example is the voting behaviour in the Brexit referendum in the UK: young peo-
ple mostly supported the country’s membership in the EU, whereas older citizens
predominantly voted in favour of leaving (Hobolt 2016).
Second, and drawing on advances in social psychology, intergenerational cul-
tural transmission refers to the transmission of values, beliefs, knowledge, prac-
tices from one generation to the next. In this process, parents generally have
the most substantial transmissive role (Abendschön 2013; Schönpflug 2009;
Trommsdorff 2009; Van Deth et al. 2011). While there are of course other factors
that can influence socialisation, such as peers and other social groups (Quintelier
2013), in line with the extant literature, we emphasise the crucial role of the fam-
ily for early socialisation, fundamental value orientations and first experiences
that shape both lifestyles and life courses (e.g. Albacete 2014; Neundorf et al.
2013; Abendschön and Tausendpfund 2017).
Intergenerational transmission can also involve different forms of capital as defined
by Bourdieu (1997). Economic capital is immediately and directly convertible into
monetary resources and is particularly suited to institutionalisation in the form of
property rights. Some simple examples for economic capital are money, wealth and
all sorts of income. Access to economic capital increases the probability that young
people receive financial support for their education (Campanella et al. 2013).
Social capital represents the total of actual and potential resources that are
associated with the possession of a permanent network of more or less institu-
tionalised relationships based on mutual acquaintance or recognition (Bourdieu
1997; see also Maloney and Roßteutscher 2009; Roßteutscher 2010). Examples of
social capital are social relations such as friendships, trust relationships, business
relationships or memberships in groups, organisations or professional associa-
tions (see Maloney and van Deth 2010; Christoforou 2011; Freitag and Kirchner
2011; Cemalcilar and Gökşen 2014). Social networks play a crucial role in the
path to economic self-sufficiency (Lorenzini and Giugni 2012), as they influence
the individual’s perception of opportunities and thereby conditions, for example,
an individual’s decision to pursue self-employment (Davidsson and Honig 2003;
Jagannathan et al. 2017; Rapp et al. 2018). The family’s social capital is likely to
influence a child’s social capital, for s/he can also rely on the parents or relatives,
friends and acquaintances when developing their own network of social relations.
The dominant interpretation of cultural capital focuses on competences within
the elite culture and has become distinct from aspects such as educational skills
and achievements. When conceived in this way, empirical research has shown
that cultural capital is transmitted from parents to their children (e.g. Kraaykamp
and Nieuwbeerta 2000; Kraaykamp and Van Eijck 2010).
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 515

We go one step further and argue that the parent’s socio-economic status defines
the reference point for young people’s career expectations. Career and education-
related aspirations of parents are likely to influence the career choices their children
make.2 Furthermore, parents can serve as role models and increase the perceived
feasibility of certain career decisions. For example, having parents who are self-
employed can make this career path appear more feasible (Jagannathan et al. 2017;
Mühlböck et al. 2017; Vegetti and Adăscăliţei 2017).
There are good reasons to study young people’s attitudes and compare them
to their parents (see also studies on genetic transmission such as Alford et al. 2005;
Fazekas and Littvay 2015). Families are arguably the most important socialising
force when it comes to young people’s economic and career outcomes. Such out-
comes are not only closely linked to economic self-sufficiency, but also affect politi-
cal attitudes and political participation (Albacete 2014; Neundorf et al. 2013).

Details on the CUPESSE dataset

The main goal of the CUPESSE project was to collect data on different indicators
related to the concept of economic self-sufficiency and to explore the role families
play in the journey from education to employment. CUPESSE involved social sci-
entists at academic institutions in 11 countries: Austria, the Czech Republic, Den-
mark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.
The country selection reflects important dimensions of economic variation within
Europe (e.g. Tosun et al. 2016) as well as variation with regard to their political
systems and welfare state arrangements (e.g. Jensen 2008; Bonoli and Natali 2012;
Chevalier 2016; Jensen et al. 2018; Tosun et al. 2017). CUPESSE involved research-
ers from all across the social sciences: sociology, political science, psychology, eco-
nomics, education and business administration.
The core activity of the CUPESSE project was the development of a survey
instrument designed to study young adults’ attitudes regarding work and education
as well as their current socio-economic situation. Although many statistical agencies
use age 25 as the end of youth, we took seriously the empirical evidence document-
ing the prolonged transition to adulthood in many societies (e.g. Arnett 2014). Our
sample therefore included young adults between the ages of 18 (to ensure we were
only working with legal adults) and 35. Moreover, we were interested in how social,
cultural and economic capital (e.g. Bourdieu 1997) not only affects young people’s
current situation, but also whether these forms of capital were transmitted from their
parents (see, e.g. Kraaykamp and Nieuwbeerta 2000; Kraaykamp and Van Eijck
2010). The development and implementation of the CUPESSE survey involved both

2
We are aware that attitudes on education and training are also affected by context variables such as the
design of the political economy (see, e.g. Busemeyer and Jensen 2012).
516 J. Tosun et al.

young Europeans and their parents, with separate questionnaires developed for each
group.3
We asked the young survey respondents whom they considered to be their mother
or father figure in order to identify the parents and also how to contact them.4 The
response options went beyond biological parents and included the spouse/partner
of a given parent, grandparents and other persons (which then had to be specified).
Depending on how the young respondents answered the initial questions about
whom they considered to be their parents, they were asked, for example, to pro-
vide information about their mother’s and/or father’s highest level of education and
employment status. Consequently, we were able to gather a lot of parent-related
information from the young people themselves. For other questions, we surveyed
the parents directly. To this end, we first asked the young people whether it would be
possible to contact their parents,5 whom we should best contact,6 and finally for the
contact information of one or both parents.
The master version of the two questionnaires was written in English and repre-
sents the collaborative and iterative efforts of the entire project consortium. The
English questionnaire was youth-proofed (discussed in depth with 12 young peo-
ple as well as with youth workers providing employment support) by the project
partners in Newcastle.7 In a next step, the master versions were translated into the
respective national languages by each country team. To ensure that the different lan-
guage versions of the English instrument were conceptually equivalent in each of the
target countries, the questionnaires were subsequently translated back to English and
then checked by bilingual language experts. The process of producing national ques-
tionnaires went well beyond simply translating them into their target languages—the
response categories also had to be adapted for the respective countries. For example,
the questionnaires for Austria, Germany and Switzerland8 are all in German, but the
formulation of both the questions and the responses (e.g. for questions about educa-
tion) varies across these three countries.
Nine of the 11 youth questionnaires were conducted online, one was conducted
face-to-face using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (Hungary), and one
was conducted face-to-face using paper and pencil (Turkey). The Hungarian and the
Turkish teams could not rely on online surveying due to low Internet coverage. For

3
Questionnaire pre-tests were conducted in each country between December 2015 and February 2016.
Insights from the pre-tests were discussed during a project meeting in February 2016. The pre-testing
mainly focused on ways to maximise the number of parental contacts provided by the young adult
respondents.
4
The corresponding variables in the dataset are YQ28_mother and YQ28_father. In the UK, the polling
firm randomly selected which parent to contact, which is one of the reasons why there are more fathers in
the sample.
5
The variable in the dataset is YQCONTACT.
6
Captured by the variables PMCORD and PFCORD.
7
To see whether the questionnaire also adequately captured the demand side of youth labour, the teams
at Heidelberg University and University of Vienna also carried out interviews with employers (Steiber
2016; Weiß and Schuck 2016).
8
The questionnaire for Switzerland was translated into German, French and Italian in accordance with
similar surveys such as the European Social Survey.
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 517

the parental surveys, most of the interviews were conducted using mixed modes,
including online (Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy, UK), Computer
Assisted Telephone Interviewing (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary,
Italy, Spain), Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (Hungary) and paper and
pencil (Switzerland, Turkey). This heterogeneity in parent survey modes was the
result of the type of information young people provided us with when asked about
how to contact their parent(s). For example, while some provided a telephone num-
ber, others gave only an email address. The various polling firms also provided guid-
ance about how to best approach the parental generation (for details on Germany,
see Shore and Tosun 2018).9
Despite the different survey modes, the sampling frames were consistent. For the
youth questionnaire, survey companies were asked to provide a probability sample
of individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 representative of employment sta-
tus (e.g. employed; self-employed; unemployed; in education/training), NUTS 2
region,10 age group, education and migration background/minority group member-
ship. For the parental questionnaire, the strategy consisted of recruiting all parents
for which the youth provided contact information.
In terms of sample size, the minimum requirement per country was 1000 young
adult respondents and 500 parents, with a reasonable proportion of fathers and
mothers. It was important to agree to these minimum numbers since the practical
constraints (e.g. the total number of individuals registered with the online panels)
and the costs varied considerably across the individual countries.
Table 1 provides an overview of the number of completed questionnaires by
young people (by gender) and their parents (broken down by whether the survey was
completed by the mother, father or both). The table also shows the survey modes
used for both groups of respondents in the individual countries. The CUPESSE data-
set consists of 20,008 observations (5945 of which have data for at least one parent).
What we are unable to show in the table is the vast number of variables included in
the dataset, namely 429 variables (239 of which are from the youth questionnaire).11

Economic self‑sufficiency

One of the goals of the CUPESSE project was to capture different aspects of eco-
nomic self-sufficiency by building on a broad definition of the concept as “a situ-
ation in which a person is economically independent in the sense of not relying on

9
The polling firms contracted in the individual countries were: Gallup (Austria), Median (Czech Repub-
lic), TNS Gallup (Denmark), YouGov (Germany), MRB Hellas (Greece), TÁRKI (Hungary), SWG
(Italy), Netquest (Spain), Gfs Bern (Switzerland), Infakto (Turkey) and IPSOS Mori (UK).
10
NUTS stands for Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics. It is a three-level geocode standard
for referencing the administrative divisions of countries for statistical purposes developed by the EU.
Here we refer to the second level of the referencing system—NUTS 2; these are the basic regions for the
application of regional policies in the EU.
11
The complete CUPESSE dataset with additional information can be accessed via the GESIS data
archive (see footnote 1).
 518

Table 1  Description of the CUPESSE two-generation survey data

N (young adults) Gender Mode (young adults) N (parents) Mode (parents)
M (%) F (%) CAWI CAPI P&P (F2F) Mother Father Both CAWI (%) CATI (%) CAPI (%) P&P (F2F) (%) P&P (mail) (%)

Austria 1684 44 56 • 286 231 44 56

Czechia 1214 43 57 • 414 110 89 94 6
Denmark 1142 56 44 • 210 193 100
Germany 3279 49 51 • 313 131 36 73 27
Greece 1538 40 60 • 382 118 100
Hungary 1295 45 55 • 337 208 50 12 88
Italy 1008 51 49 • 291 238 51 49
Spain 1826 49 51 • 592 262 150 100
Switzerland 1002 40 60 • 185 83 64 36
Turkey 3016 50 50 • 418 119 100
UK 3004 49 51 • 136 363 100
Total 20,008 47 53 3564 2056 325 42 39 9 9 2

The bullets indicate which of these interviewing methods was used for which country
CAPI computer-assisted personal interviewing, CATI computer-assisted telephone interviewing, P&P paper and pencil, F2F face-to-face
J. Tosun et al.
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 519

financial support from her family or the welfare system” (Warmuth et al. 2015: 5).
In this view, participation in the labour market is but one of many elements to be
considered, reasonably the first one of a chain which includes possible sources of
external support.12 Additionally, to take full advantage of the individual-level focus
of the project, the data also looked at respondents’ perceptions of their own self-
sufficiency. Such perceptions are the crucial link between the actual economic sit-
uation and individuals’ attitudes. For instance, research in political behaviour has
repeatedly shown that people’s perceptions of the economy act as a filter between
the objective economic conditions and electoral choices (e.g. Debus et al. 2014).
Hence, by looking at respondents’ assessments of their own economic self-suffi-
ciency, the CUPESSE data offer a valuable resource to study the individual under-
pinnings of attitudes that are generally not captured by other indicators of economic
performance.
One facet of economic self-sufficiency is income independence, that is, whether
and to what extent respondents provide for themselves through paid jobs or self-
employment—versus relying on their family or on the state. This indicator is meas-
ured with an item battery, where respondents are asked to select all the sources
of their income.13 From these observations, we can classify respondents based on
whether their income fully or partially depends on the family or the state, or whether
it is completely independent. However, having a fully independent income does not
always imply being able to afford a decent standard of living, let alone being satis-
fied with one’s own economic situation.
A second aspect of self-sufficiency is the housing situation of the young respond-
ents, that is, whether they live with their parents (or other older family members).
While this indicator might be heavily affected by people’s own economic conditions
in contexts (social and cultural) where the constraints to moving out of the parental
home are primarily economic (see Isengard et al. 2017). The housing situation could
also be due to other considerations (e.g. potential social stigma associated with liv-
ing alone without being married). Moreover, when looking at young adults living
with their parents, it is important to distinguish between those who never moved out
of the parental home and those who moved back after living on their own for a cer-
tain period (the so-called boomerangers).14
Moving from objective indicators towards perceptions, we look at respondents’
self-assessed economic conditions. Economically self-sufficient individuals are able
to provide for themselves and afford a reasonable standard of living. This dimension

12
See Section A1 in the Supplemental Material for the frequencies of occupational status among the
young respondents in the CUPESSE survey.
13
Options are paid and self-employment work, redundancy pay, unemployment or other social benefits,
support from family members or by the partner, investments, savings, inherited money and other non-
social benefits. The relevant variables are YQ10_a-YQ10_i.
14
The item battery YQ28a_0-YQ28a_8 captures whether respondents live alone or with other people,
including parents, grandparents and other relatives, as well as their partner and/or children. Moreover,
the question YQ28d captures whether the respondents have ever lived apart from their parents, which
allowed us to distinguish the boomerangers from those who have never moved out from the parental
home.
520 J. Tosun et al.

Fig. 1  Indicators of economic self-sufficiency by country

has been captured in the CUPESSE questionnaire by asking respondents to what

extent during the six months prior to the interview they were able to (1) pay their
bills by themselves, (2) afford decent housing, (3) afford extras like trips or hobbies
and (4) put some money aside. These four indicators capture two important aspects
of economic self-sufficiency: the respondents’ ability to afford basic living standards
(items one and two) and to afford extras (items three and four).15
Finally, a subjective indicator, financial satisfaction, can provide further insights
into the respondents’ condition. Since this construct is an evaluation, it is of course
sensitive to a number of unobservable benchmarks, for instance what respondents
would consider to be a satisfactory situation for themselves, or how generally posi-
tive or negative their outlook on life is. However, when compared to more objective
criteria discussed here, it provides an interesting insight into how young people’s

15
The relevant variables are YQ9_a-YQ9_d. A similar distinction is also made by Gowdy and Pearlmut-
ter (1993).
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 521

expectations are met in their current conditions. In the CUPESSE data, this is meas-
ured by asking the respondents to rate the degree of satisfaction with their own
financial situation on an ordinal four-point Likert scale.16
Figure 1 shows the country frequencies for all indicator types.17 In each panel,
countries are sorted on the horizontal axis from high to low self-sufficiency with
respect to the specific factor plotted. The figure illustrates how the indicators cap-
ture different aspects of self-sufficiency that do not necessarily appear alongside one
another. For instance, looking at the two most objective facets on the top row, we
see that Hungarian respondents are among the top three in our sample with respect
to income independence, but they are among the bottom three when it comes to liv-
ing independently from family. A similar albeit less extreme example of this pattern
is Turkey. The opposite case is Denmark, where less than 50% of the respondents
have a fully independent income, but about 80% of them live apart from their fam-
ily—which is most likely due to the high proportion of students in the Danish sam-
ple. Looking at the two more subjective indicators on the bottom row, the pattern
is rather consistent. For both indicators, the top four countries where respondents
perceive themselves as better off are Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Germany,
while the Southern European countries all towards the bottom of the scale. Hungary
is a somewhat interesting case, where respondents see themselves as very much able
to afford basics but not extras. This is probably due to the very low costs of living in
Hungary relative to the other countries in the sample (see Eurostat 2017).
But how do the young respondents fare in terms of economic self-sufficiency
compared to their parents? The CUPESSE data allow the comparison of two gen-
erations of respondents by asking the same questions of economic self-sufficiency
to both the young adults and their parents. We focus here on the subjective indica-
tors of self-sufficiency, namely the stated ability to afford basics and extras and the
satisfaction with one’s own financial situation. While the two objective indicators
discussed here are important, they use the contribution from the family (in terms
of income or housing resources) as a baseline to determine the individual self-suf-
ficiency of the young adults. The subjective indicators, on the other hand, can be
measured in the same way for both parents and children; hence, they allow for a
more straightforward comparison.
Figure 2 shows the difference between parents and children with respect to their
self-assessed economic situation—that is, the extent to which the parents and chil-
dren are able to afford basics and extras and their assessment of their financial satis-
faction. The dotted lines cutting through the planes horizontally and vertically rep-
resent the medians with respect to the different indicators among the countries in
the sample. The grey diagonal lines represent the perfect congruence between chil-
dren’s and parents’ values. Unsurprisingly, most values are within the lower triangle,
i.e. parents on average tend to evaluate their economic situation better and are more
satisfied with their economic situation than their children. However, there are two

16
The relevant variable is YQ8.
17
For all figures, frequencies have been adjusted using post-stratification weights based on gender, age,
education and NUTS 2 region.
522 J. Tosun et al.

Fig. 2  Economic self-sufficiency and financial satisfaction of young people and their parents

instances where this is not the case: in Hungary and Greece, the young respondents
judge their own ability to afford extras (i.e. to afford extra trips and hobbies and
to put aside money) as higher than their parents. This might reflect a cultural shift
between the two generations in these countries, wherein young people are perhaps
more willing to treat themselves to extras than their parents. In fact, by comparing
the distance from the diagonal lines of the points in the two top panels, this phe-
nomenon appears to spread beyond Hungary and Greece: in general, the advantage
of the parents over their children is more pronounced with respect to their ability to
afford basics than to afford extras in all countries except Denmark. One last observa-
tion worth noting is the dramatic difference in parents’ and their children’s ability to
afford basics in Spain and to a lesser extent in Greece. In the former case, parents
rate their ability one point higher on average than their children, which on a four-
point scale means a quarter of the full range. The Greek case is more puzzling, as
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 523

the young respondents appear to be much less able to afford basic standard of living
costs than their parents, but more able to afford extras. This is an interesting aspect
of the data and deserves a more thorough investigation, especially considering the
Greek experience with austerity (see Ladi 2014; Andriopoulou et al. 2018).
Moving on to financial satisfaction, the bottom panel tells a similar story. The
absence of values in the upper triangle indicates that in no case are children on aver-
age more satisfied than their parents. However, the picture shows some interesting
variation. For example, parents in Spain are almost twice as likely to be satisfied
than their children (60% vs. 36%), whereas in Greece parents are nearly as dissatis-
fied as their children with their own finances (30% in both cases). Looking at the
countries’ relative positions with respect to the median, it is clear that most cross-
country variation in terms of generational change occurs among the least affluent
countries in the sample. All Southern and Central-Eastern European countries are
within the bottom 50% of the distribution in terms of average financial satisfaction.
While in Greece and Hungary there seems to be more intergenerational similarity, in
Italy and Spain the older respondents are much more likely to be satisfied than the
younger ones. The remaining and wealthier countries are sorted diagonally in near-
perfect manner, indicating a striking similarity between the most affluent societies
with respect to intergenerational change.

Attitudes towards welfare benefits and universal basic income

Economic self-sufficiency describes the extent to which individuals are able to

provide for themselves without external aid. Such aid, in the case of young adults,
typically comes in the form of economic support from the family and/or the wel-
fare state (Esping-Andersen 1999). Chevalier (2016) shows that in some European
countries, families play a crucial role for the direct or indirect provision of welfare
support, indicating that welfare regimes are “familialised” (Esping-Andersen 1999;
see also Saraceno 2016). In other countries, such as Sweden, welfare support for
young people is “defamilialised”, which means that young people are treated no dif-
ferent than adults and they are entitled to the same social rights regardless of age. In
Southern European countries such as Italy, families are the units that directly sup-
ply welfare support. With this welfare mode, there is also a risk of concentration of
wealth in families when the state does not provide welfare support. In Continental
European countries such as Germany, while welfare support is provided by the state,
practically, it is supplied via the family.
Family support may take a psychological toll on the individuals, by lowering the recip-
ients’ self-esteem or undermining their feeling of independence and self-efficacy (Finger-
man et al. 2013). Consequently, young adults who are not economically self-sufficient
may develop a preference for generous (and “defamilialised”) social policies or other
forms of wealth redistribution as an alternative to the direct support from the family.
Preferences for redistribution are a heavily researched topic in political econ-
omy, as (re-)distributional preferences are in essence the main source of division
between the economic left and right in most democracies (Alesina and Giuliano
2011). Many of the explanations proposed elaborate on two broad mechanisms.
524 J. Tosun et al.

Fig. 3  Attitudes of young people and their parents on universal basic income and welfare benefits

The first mechanism refers to economic self-interest, where individuals belonging

to lower income groups are expected to have a greater preference for redistribu-
tive policies. The second mechanism is about individual beliefs, where prefer-
ences are shaped by attitudes regarding acceptable degrees of societal inequal-
ity or poverty. Such attitudes are shaped by the family (Neundorf et al. 2013;
Albacete 2014), either through the transmission of values (Abendschön 2013) or
the provision of financial support independent from the state (see Alesina and
Giuliano 2011). Moreover, economic self-interest and beliefs are interrelated;
individuals tend to justify their own status and the reality surrounding them (see
Benabou and Tirole 2006). Their social position, in turn, influences perceptions
of inequality and poverty in society (see Dawtry et al. 2015).
While it lies beyond the scope of this article to extensively discuss the determi-
nants of attitudes towards welfare policies and redistribution, we seek to demon-
strate that the CUPESSE data provide an opportunity to link young respondents’
economic self-sufficiency to their preferences for the corresponding policies,
while controlling for their parents’ preferences. In particular, we look at the atti-
tudes towards universal minimum income and welfare benefits.
The two items are stimulus sentences to which the respondents were asked to
state their level of agreement on a four-point scale, ranging from “strongly disa-
gree” to “strongly agree”. The respondents’ attitudes towards universal minimum
income are captured by the statement “Everyone should have the right to a mini-
mum income even if they are not working”. Attitudes towards welfare benefits are
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 525

Fig. 4  Results of the ordinal logit regression models

assessed based on the degree of agreement/disagreement with the statement “If

welfare benefits are too high there is no incentive to find work”.18
Figure 3 shows the country averages of the responses given by young adults and
their parents. The diagonal lines represent perfect congruence between young adults
and parents, while the dotted lines cutting through the plain are the medians. The
first striking observation is the similarity between young adults and parents with
respect to their attitudes on universal minimum income and welfare benefits. Most
observations are on the diagonal lines, or very close to it. Moreover, no clear geo-
graphical patterns emerge. While respondents in Southern Europe tend to support a
universal minimum income, this pattern does not re-appear with respect to welfare
benefits. Overall, Fig. 3 shows that the two generations surveyed in the context of
the CUPESSE project are remarkably similar with respect to the two attitudes con-
sidered in the 11 countries included in the sample.
How do respondents’ preferences for universal minimum income and welfare ben-
efits relate to their own degree of economic self-sufficiency? To answer this question,
Fig. 4 shows the coefficients of two ordinal logit models where the two variables are

18
The two respective variables are YQ21_f and YQ21_c for the young adults, PMQ18_f and PMQ18_c
for the mothers, and PFQ18_f and PFQ18_c for the fathers. The scale of the item on welfare benefits has
been reversed for these analyses in order to have both items ranging from a negative to a positive attitude.
526 J. Tosun et al.

regressed on a number of young adults’ and parental characteristics.19 The two panels
at the top show the coefficients of the indicators of young adults’ economic self-suffi-
ciency discussed in the previous section. The two panels at the bottom show the coeffi-
cients for the parents’ ability to afford basic living standards and extras, their financial
satisfaction and their responses to the respective attitudinal questions.20
Starting with the parents’ indicators, the only variables that have a significant and
positive effect are the parents’ own attitudes on the respective indicators. This is not
surprising given the results observed in Fig. 3. In a way, the function of these two
variables in the regression models can be regarded as similar to a lagged dependent
variable in a time-series regression: they capture all the sources of unobserved indi-
vidual variation that can be explained, in this case, by family ideology and beliefs.
The lack of a significant marginal effect for the three indicators of parental economic
situation is also unsurprising, as the contribution of these factors for young adults’
preferences is likely to be mediated by the parents’ own preferences or by young
adults’ own economic situation.
Turning to the young adults, a greater ability to afford extras and having a fully
independent income are both negatively associated with holding positive attitudes
towards both universal basic income and welfare benefits. In other words, the greater
the degree of self-sufficiency, the lower the demand for redistributive policies. This
finding supports the “rational” explanation of preferences, according to which peo-
ple who are worse-off economically are more likely to support generous welfare
policies. Finally, respondents who do not live with their parents tend, on average,
to have a slightly more positive attitude towards welfare benefits. This may be due
to the greater need for public support for individuals who cannot rely on the family
to assist with housing costs, for example. Overall, the models show that both the
parental and the young respondents’ own economic self-sufficiency have an impact
on their attitudes towards redistributive policies. We believe that these initial find-
ings merit closer attention by future research, which can draw on the CUPESSE data
presented in this article.

Conclusion

The small snapshot of CUPESSE data we presented here illustrates that there exist
numerous noteworthy differences in the socio-economic situation of young people
and their parents in Europe, in particular the significant differences with regard to
economic self-sufficiency across the two generations. This is an important obser-
vation since Europe has entered a critical phase of its integration process with the
looming Brexit and the increase in right-wing populist parties benefitting from pub-
lic support (Corduwener 2017). Against this background, pro-EU politicians such
as French President Emanuel Macron have called for deepening the EU through

19
See Table A1 in the Supplemental Material for the full model results, including country dummies and
cut points between the response categories.
20
All variables are coded in the same way as explained previously.
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 527

intensified integration. Yet considering the differences in the perceived and actual
living conditions of young people in the EU, particularly when compared to their
parents’ generation, such calls may fail to attract support and even backfire (see
Kaina 2013). This finding becomes even more important when considering that
young people have typically been the main supporters of European integration in the
past. Therefore, we believe that the unfolding debate on reforming the EU must take
into account not only geographical differences, but also—and arguably even more
so—intergenerational differences and treat these as a starting point for policy action.
We are certain that the empirical approach developed by the CUPESSE project can
be useful in informing future research and policy-making.
The CUPESSE data not only provide information on economic self-sufficiency
for two generations, but also cover a wide range of additional topics that provide a
nuanced picture of young Europeans’ socio-economic situation. The dataset offers
insights into the cultural and social capital endowment of young people as well as their
values with regard to work. It also contains information that can help explain how
young people make decisions regarding education and training, employment and self-
employment (e.g. Mühlböck et al. 2017; Dvouletý et al. 2018). The dataset has vari-
ables relating to the health status of the respondents (Vancea and Utzet 2017, 2018)
as well as their experiences using public services when searching for employment
(see Shore and Tosun 2017). Rather unusual for a dataset in political science, it also
contains information on parenting style (with a view towards better understanding the
intergenerational transmission of values and resources; see Warmuth et al. 2015) and
concepts related to personality and grit (see Arco-Tirado et al. 2018).
Overall, this data source allows social scientists to investigate the multidimen-
sionality of the challenges young people currently face, and how these challenges
impact their attitudes on welfare policies and redistribution.

Acknowledgements We thank Michael Camasso and Radha Jagannathan as well as Asimina Chris-
toforou, Gerbert Kraaykamp, Fay Makantasi, Tiziana Nazio, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Jacqueline O’Reilly
and Jan van Deth for their contribution to the CUPESSE project (Seventh Framework Programme; Grant
Agreement No. 61325). CUPESSE received additional funding from the Mannheim Centre for European
Social Research (MZES) and the Field of Focus 4 “Self-Regulation and Regulation: Individuals and
Organisations” at Heidelberg University. We further acknowledge helpful comments on this article by
two anonymous reviewers. Julian Rossello provided valuable research assistance.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Inter-
national License (http://creat​iveco​mmons​.org/licen​ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribu-
tion, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and
the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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Jale Tosun is professor at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University. Her research
focuses on comparative public policy, international political economy and public administration.

Jose L. Arco‑Tirado is professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of Granada. His research
focuses on psychological and educational factors determining competencies and employability.

Maurizio Caserta is professor of economics at the University of Catania, Department of Economics

and Management. His research focuses on the economic analysis of institutions, local development and
migration economics.

Zeynep Cemalcilar is an associate professor of social psychology at Koç University, Turkey. Her cur-
rent research focuses on positive youth development, motivation, psychological interventions and the use
of technology in the social life.

Markus Freitag is professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern. His research
focuses on political sociology.
Perceived economic self‑sufficiency: a country‑ and… 531

Felix Hörisch is Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher Heidelberg University. His research interests
include comparative policy analysis, political economy, labour markets, social and fiscal policies.

Carsten Jensen is professor in the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University. His research
is focused on the causes and consequences of redistributive politics in advanced western democracies, as
well as democratic representation more broadly.

Bernhard Kittel is professor of economic sociology at the University of Vienna. His current research
focuses on justice attitudes, collective decision-making and youth labour market participation.

Levente Littvay is associate professor of Political Science at Central European University in Budapest,
Hungary. He researches quantitative methods, psychology of populism and genetics/socialisation in twin
and family studies.

Martin Lukeš is head of the entrepreneurship department at the University of Economics, Prague.
His research focuses on psychology of entrepreneurship, evaluation of entrepreneurship policies and
self-employment.

William A. Maloney is the Head of the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle
University where he is Professor of Politics. His research interests include: interest groups, civil society
organisations and political participation.

Monika Mühlböck is a post doc at the Department of Economic Sociology at the University of Vienna.
She mainly studies labour market policies and European integration.

Emily Rainsford is a research associate at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on the political
activism of young people in the UK and Europe.

Carolin Rapp is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of
Copenhagen. Her research is situated in the areas of political sociology, political psychology and social
policy.

Bettina Schuck is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg Univer-
sity. Her research focuses on social inequality and stratification in a country-comparative perspective.

Jennifer Shore is a postdoctoral fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research at the
University of Mannheim. Her research interests include political behaviours and attitudes, welfare states
and comparative public policy.

Nadia Steiber is senior researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria. Her research
interests comprise the sociology of work, youth unemployment, women’s work and employment, migrant
labour markets and challenges of ageing societies.

Nebi Sümer is professor of psychology at Middle East Technical University, Turkey. His research inter-
ests are parenting, attachment across the lifespan, road user behaviours and the effects of unemployment.

Panos Tsakloglou is professor at the Department of International and European Economic Studies of
the Athens University of Economics and Business. His research focuses on inequality, poverty, social
exclusion and the redistributive role of the welfare state.

Mihaela Vancea is a social science researcher at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain. Her main
research areas are employability and entrepreneurship of young people as well as health and well-being.

Federico Vegetti is a post doc research fellow at the University of Milan in Italy. His research interests
lie at the intersection between political science, sociology and psychology, which he investigates using
mostly quantitative methods.