Utilizing age-period-cohort analysis, this paper examines the development of income distribution across periodic economic fluctuations in relation to cohorts and age groups. The empirical analysis is based on the Finnish Income Distribution Statistics and Household Expenditure Surveys covering the period of 1966-2015. The findings suggest that the period and cohort effects can be identified as the main effects on relative income, while the age effects have no meaningful impact when the control variables are taken into account. This result reveals a connection between the effects of economic shocks and cohort placement on labor market entry. Additionally, absolute income analysis suggests that economic shocks create stagnation points in income development, which are especially detrimental to cohorts who are transitioning into labor markets. Additionally, middle-income attainment has not changed due to periodic shocks but rather is related to inter-cohort inequalities and relative income differences, where the baby boomer generation is a clear winner. JEL Codes: C31, D31

The main aim of this study is to analyse household consumption patterns in the highest and lowest income quintiles and explore how they have changed over time and generations. Thus, the article explores whether social inclusivity through consumption has truly increased. This study utilises the cross-sectional time-series data of the Finnish Household Expenditure Surveys (HESs), covering the period 1966–2016. We use the Age-Period-Cohort Gap/Oaxaca (APCGO) model with logitrank dependent variables as the main statistical method. Our results indicate that an overall high income is advantageous with respect to income and spending, though the gap between high- and low-income groups has remained stagnant over cohorts. A more in-depth analysis reveals that the expenditure gap, in terms of necessities, food, and groceries consumption, has narrowed. Instead, income elastic-oriented spending on culture and leisure time has significantly increased in the high-income group, where the expenditure gap has expanded 60 percentage points over the cohorts. Simply put, expenditures on necessities have become more inclusive, but low-income groups are increasingly more ‘leisure-poor’. Overall, high-income classes are spending an increasing amount of money on culture and leisure time over cohorts.

In this article, we ask to what extent immigrants and people with disabilities are excluded from labor markets and to what extent they are exposed to poverty in different European welfare state regimes. Our starting points lie in the United Nation’s and European Union’s agendas for sustainable development, in research on welfare regimes, and in the social investment paradigm. We utilize the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) to run multilevel random effect models to measure the extent to which there are regime-specific differences in risk of poverty and months out of work. Our results show that within-regime dif-ferences are often larger than between-regime differences. The implementation of the social in-vestment paradigm, emphasizing the role of a decent level of income transfers combined with extensive public services, fortifies the fiscal and social sustainability of the welfare state.

This article examines inter-cohort wealth development in Finland during the period 1987–2016. As previous research has stated that annual variation has increased over time, we aim toimprove previous research by focusing on gross, net, and financial wealth gaps betweencohorts. The opening of the Finnish financial markets and the introduction of new types ofinvestment instruments since the late 1980s created entirely new circumstances for businessand financial markets. We utilise the time series of the Official Statistics of Finland’s (OFS)Household Assets. We use the marginal effects method with a generalised linear model (GLM),and interaction terms. The results show that inter-cohort wealth inequality in gross- and netwealth has not increased over time, and all differences are attributed to within-year variations.As a new finding, financial wealth shows variations among three distinct investment groups,and higher investment interest can be associated with decreasing initial investment ages amongyounger cohorts. It seems that younger cohorts embraced new financial instruments much morein early age than did their older counterparts. Overall, the results show that financialderegulation considerably increased investment in financial assets among all cohort groups.

How much it matters for your income development what generation you happen to be born? We answer this question by using registers of the total population, we study generational income inequality during 1970–2018 and, for men and women in Finland. We follow the income trajectories of the cohorts born in 1920–1983 over their adult life course and observed, how certain structural factors explain differences in income trajectories. Our study expands state-of-the-art knowledge, as previous research has often bypassed the question of how much generational income differences explains of populations total income inequalities and what factors may explain the different generational income trajectories. Results show that overall generational income differences explained quarter for women and 6 percent for men total income inequality. Each successive cohort until 1980s had a higher average income trajectory. However, generation born in the 1980s has been falling behind. For both men and women, age structure and education were the most important factors associated with income inequality. On contrary to previous findings on Nordic welfare state, our results also indicate that, generational income trajectories are affected by economic shocks.