Income and Value Importance: Associations in Times of Growth and Recession

This talk will examine the changing role of socioeconomic status (SES) in individual value importance, between times of growth and recession. We hypothesized that the affluence and power associated with high income, will promote support for self-focused values of openness to change and self-enhancement. It will discourage support for opposite values. We postulate that recession will increase the prominence of scarcity especially among individuals of low SES, thus augmenting these effects. We used European Social Survey samples from 2002 to 2014 in 25 countries (N = 175,427). Values were measured using the Portrait Values Questionnaire 21, SES using total household income, and fluctuations in country growth using deviations of Gross Domestic Product per Capita (GDP) within time from the country`s mean GDP across the study period. Using random effects three level models, we accounted for the nested nature of the data (individual, time, and country levels), controlling for age and gender. Individuals of higher income were less likely to value conservation, and more likely to value openness to change and self-enhancement than individuals of lower income. In years of recession, income was more strongly associated with these values than in years of growth. Thus, the social context has a role in value importance, and scarcity can dictate individual goals. Moreover, recession may deepen value heterogeneity within a society.