Postmaterialist Values and the Shift from Survival to Self‐Expression Values
Postmaterialist Values and the Shift from Survival to Self‐Expression Values Ronald Inglehart The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior Edited by Russell J. Dalton and Hans‐Dieter Klingemann Print Publication Date: Aug 2007 Subject: Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Institutions Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199270125.003.0012
Abstract and Keywords This article discusses the postmaterialist values, as well as the shift from survival to selfexpression. It looks at controversies over the value change thesis and discusses changing political arguments. One section covers intergenerational value change in economically advanced and low-income societies. This article concludes that intergenerational value changes actually reflect historic changes in a society's existential conditions. Although these changes are far from universal, they can be found only in societies where the younger generations have experienced rather different formative conditions from those that had shaped the older generations. Keywords: postmaterialist values, value change thesis controversies, changing political arguments, intergenera tional value change, existential conditions, formative conditions
THROUGHOUT most of history, survival has been uncertain for the vast majority of the population. But the remarkable economic growth of the era after the Second World War, together with the rise of the welfare state, brought fundamentally new conditions in ad vanced industrial societies. The post‐war birth cohorts spent their formative years under levels of prosperity that were unprecedented in human history, and the welfare state rein forced the feeling that survival was secure, producing an intergenerational value change that is gradually transforming the politics and cultural norms of advanced industrial soci eties. The best‐documented evidence of value change is the shift from materialist to postmateri alist priorities (Inglehart 1977, 1990). Postmaterialist values emerge as people shift from giving top priority to “materialist” values such as economic and physical security, toward increasing emphasis on “postmaterialist” priorities such as autonomy, self‐expression and the quality of life. This shift is linked with changing (p. 224) existential conditions—above all, the change from growing up with the feeling that survival is precarious, to growing up with the feeling that survival can be taken for granted. A massive body of evidence gath ered from 1970 to the present demonstrates that an intergenerational shift from material Page 1 of 21