The Dynamics of Emancipative Values in Europe: the Cross-Generational Perspective

Current research focuses on cohort dynamic of Emancipative Values Index (EVI) compared to national socioeconomic advancement in a set of European societies longitudinally covered by the World Values Survey and World Bank Data. This paper addresses the analysis of twenty countries that have been covered in waves Nº4, Nº5 and Nº6 of the project, including Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Descriptive statistics, linear regression and generalized additive modelling are deployed in data analysis. Study suggests the emergence of trends showing stagnation or even retrogression of emancipative values, which might be partly due to socioeconomic turndowns of the late XX century as well as to institutional peculiarities of nations, reflected in policy making and associated with deep structural and functional changes incurred in those societies. The results shed new light on the interrelation between steady and rapid socioeconomic advancement and emancipative values changes.