Young Germans – like their counterparts across the democratic West – have swung to the right, into the arms of populist parties. To reverse this trend, the next German government must focus on improving community well-being and promoting social mobility.
MUNICH – On February 23, German voters will elect a new federal parliament, and many expect the country’s established political parties to lose ground. In recent elections – for the European Parliament in June and in the East German Länder (federal states) of Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg in September – young voters flocked to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. In the three eastern states, for example, 31-38% of voters under the age of 25 voted for the AfD.
It was a shocking shift: in the 2021 federal election, young Germans largely supported the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), which won, respectively, 23% and 21% of the vote among 18-24 year olds and 21% and 15% among 25-34 year olds. Building on this success, the Greens and the FDP formed a new government with the Social Democrats. Hopes were high that the Ampelkoalition, or traffic-light coalition, for the three parties’ colors, would address the economic concerns of the young voters who helped bring it to power.
That did not happen, and young Germans – like their counterparts across the democratic West – have swung to the right, into the arms of the populist AfD. A 2023 study suggests that the growing appeal of such parties can be explained by zero-sum thinking. The belief that groups gain only if other groups lose is deeply embedded in populism, which sets itself against global elites, the deep state, or foreigners whose success is believed to come at the expense of locals.
The study’s authors found that zero-sum thinking tends to prevail when resources are scarce. That is certainly the case in Germany, where the economy has stagnated since the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving young people with limited job prospects and little chance of moving up the income scale. Even if the German economy were growing robustly, young people would still be facing one of the lowest rates of social mobility among OECD countries.
Improving young people’s economic prospects and increasing social mobility should be a high priority for the next German government. The Harvard economist Raj Chetty has some suggestions for how to go about it.
To promote equality of opportunity, which is easier to agree on than redistributing income, Chetty recommends focusing on communities, rather than the individual, as the unit of change. Specifically, he suggests targeting areas where opportunity is lacking. Such an approach accounts for the fact that the chances of a child escaping poverty vary dramatically across places, but also within cities. For example, Chetty’s research has shown that moving to a better neighborhood can improve children’s prospects significantly, even when families’ financial status remains unchanged.
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Increasing social mobility, according to Chetty, also requires building social capital through a system of “connected capitalism,” in which financial incentives link people who have opportunities with those who lack them. In communities where the rich and poor interact more, people born into poverty are more likely to receive guidance from their wealthier connections on navigating complex decisions, such as where to go to university, and to be inspired to follow similar career paths. One way to reduce class segregation is by providing low-income families with housing vouchers to move to opportunity-rich neighborhoods.
Implementing these ideas and others espoused by Chetty requires a wholesale reorganization of social assistance. In Germany, the different government agencies responsible for affordable housing, employment, and state benefits would need to unite around the common cause of creating opportunity and to devise policy to achieve that goal.
A quarter-century ago, the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam published Bowling Alone, which showed how the United States, once a country of joiners, was turning into a country of loners. Americans were not attending church or marrying as often as they had been, and Putnam warned of social isolation’s corrosive effect on democracy.
The same trend can be seen in Germany, where feelings of loneliness have increased over the past five years, especially among people under the age of 30. This has surely contributed to the widening political divide between the country’s young men, who have grown increasingly conservative, and its young women, who have adopted far more liberal views. Compounding young people’s plight is the fact that almost one in five Germans between the ages of 20 and 34 have no vocational qualification, which often results in below-average earnings.
Like Chetty, Putnam underscored the importance of building “bridging social capital” – the ties that link people across generations, genders, and incomes. The next German government must focus on improving such ties, which includes promoting community well-being and economic prosperity, to give young people hope for the future and stop their drift toward far-right populism.
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MUNICH – On February 23, German voters will elect a new federal parliament, and many expect the country’s established political parties to lose ground. In recent elections – for the European Parliament in June and in the East German Länder (federal states) of Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg in September – young voters flocked to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. In the three eastern states, for example, 31-38% of voters under the age of 25 voted for the AfD.
It was a shocking shift: in the 2021 federal election, young Germans largely supported the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), which won, respectively, 23% and 21% of the vote among 18-24 year olds and 21% and 15% among 25-34 year olds. Building on this success, the Greens and the FDP formed a new government with the Social Democrats. Hopes were high that the Ampelkoalition, or traffic-light coalition, for the three parties’ colors, would address the economic concerns of the young voters who helped bring it to power.
That did not happen, and young Germans – like their counterparts across the democratic West – have swung to the right, into the arms of the populist AfD. A 2023 study suggests that the growing appeal of such parties can be explained by zero-sum thinking. The belief that groups gain only if other groups lose is deeply embedded in populism, which sets itself against global elites, the deep state, or foreigners whose success is believed to come at the expense of locals.
The study’s authors found that zero-sum thinking tends to prevail when resources are scarce. That is certainly the case in Germany, where the economy has stagnated since the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving young people with limited job prospects and little chance of moving up the income scale. Even if the German economy were growing robustly, young people would still be facing one of the lowest rates of social mobility among OECD countries.
Improving young people’s economic prospects and increasing social mobility should be a high priority for the next German government. The Harvard economist Raj Chetty has some suggestions for how to go about it.
To promote equality of opportunity, which is easier to agree on than redistributing income, Chetty recommends focusing on communities, rather than the individual, as the unit of change. Specifically, he suggests targeting areas where opportunity is lacking. Such an approach accounts for the fact that the chances of a child escaping poverty vary dramatically across places, but also within cities. For example, Chetty’s research has shown that moving to a better neighborhood can improve children’s prospects significantly, even when families’ financial status remains unchanged.
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Don’t miss our next event, taking place at the AI Action Summit in Paris. Register now, and watch live on February 10 as leading thinkers consider what effective AI governance demands.
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Increasing social mobility, according to Chetty, also requires building social capital through a system of “connected capitalism,” in which financial incentives link people who have opportunities with those who lack them. In communities where the rich and poor interact more, people born into poverty are more likely to receive guidance from their wealthier connections on navigating complex decisions, such as where to go to university, and to be inspired to follow similar career paths. One way to reduce class segregation is by providing low-income families with housing vouchers to move to opportunity-rich neighborhoods.
Implementing these ideas and others espoused by Chetty requires a wholesale reorganization of social assistance. In Germany, the different government agencies responsible for affordable housing, employment, and state benefits would need to unite around the common cause of creating opportunity and to devise policy to achieve that goal.
A quarter-century ago, the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam published Bowling Alone, which showed how the United States, once a country of joiners, was turning into a country of loners. Americans were not attending church or marrying as often as they had been, and Putnam warned of social isolation’s corrosive effect on democracy.
The same trend can be seen in Germany, where feelings of loneliness have increased over the past five years, especially among people under the age of 30. This has surely contributed to the widening political divide between the country’s young men, who have grown increasingly conservative, and its young women, who have adopted far more liberal views. Compounding young people’s plight is the fact that almost one in five Germans between the ages of 20 and 34 have no vocational qualification, which often results in below-average earnings.
Like Chetty, Putnam underscored the importance of building “bridging social capital” – the ties that link people across generations, genders, and incomes. The next German government must focus on improving such ties, which includes promoting community well-being and economic prosperity, to give young people hope for the future and stop their drift toward far-right populism.