The Austrians’ expectations for the future

Abstract

Building on the knowledge that Europe is currently experiencing a high level of pessimism about the future, this article seeks to explain why Austrians view their own future as well as the country's future with either pessimism or optimism. Both "futures" are often framed differently: A personal one that still seems to be under control and a societal one, which is perceived to be uncontrollable. Thus, social unease is higher than personal unease. Using structural equation modelling and data from the "Sozialer Survey Österreich", indicators of social integration were found to be influential predictors. Results furthermore indicate an underlying explanation, tied to perceptions of societal malaise vs societal wellbeing, driving the opinions on the future in specific directions.

Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution

“…This relation is not driven by the Southeastern states. Excluding South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida from the calculation yields a correlation of −0.348 with a p-value of 0.056 16. These results are in online AppendixTable OA11.…”

“…We explore this systematically at the commuting zone (CZ) level, assigning respondents to CZs using their zip codes, and using actual mobility numbers and several key covariates from Chetty et al (2014). 16 We consider the effect on perceived mobility of measures of racial segregation, income segregation, social capital, the Gini coefficient, the share of employment in manufacturing, and the college graduation rate controlling for the respondent's gender, age, number of children, income, political affiliation, educational attainment, personal mobility experience, and immigrant status. We find that perceptions are more optimistic when there is more racial segregation, less income segregation, and more social capital.…”

Ein pessimistischer Blick nach vorn? Die Erwartungen der Österreicher*innen an die Entwicklung der Lebensumstände nach Corona

“…Die Corona-Krise führte zu einem Anstieg an Zukunftspessimismus in Österreich (Prandner et al 2020a). Während 2018 ca.…”

“…Oben angeführte Ergebnisse stehen in einem deutlichen Kontrast zu vorherigen Umfragedaten: Auf Basis von Daten des SSÖ aus dem Jahr 2018 -also vor der Corona-Krise -berichtenPrandner et al (2020a), dass ca. 40 % der Befragten von einer Verschlechterung der Lebensumstände in Österreich in den nächsten Jahren ausgehen, während 18 % mit einer Verbesserung rechnen.…”