Each generation a rung higher — and staying there

Mean Welzel emancipative-values score (0–1; higher = more autonomy, choice, equality and voice) by decade of birth, plotted against year of survey, pooled across nine high-income Western democracies.

Takeaway: the cohorts line up like stairs — every younger generation sits above the one before it, and within a fixed survey window the ordering never inverts. The whole staircase drifts upward with the period, but the rungs keep their relative height: replacement, not life-cycle.

Birth decade is floor((year − age)/10) × 10; cohorts shown where the year cell holds an effective n ≥ 100. Within the fixed 2010–2022 window the youngest plotted cohort (1980s) averages 0.429 against 0.33 for the 1930s — a gap of 0.098 on the 0–1 scale. Pooled over the nine hero democracies; per-cell n ranges from 108 to roughly 1,070. Source: World Values Survey / European Values Study, weighted.

A Western revolution, not a global one

Mean emancipative-values score by World Bank region, decade by decade. Each country counts once within its region (equal country weight), then regions are tracked over time.

Takeaway: Europe and North America climb and then plateau near the top; Latin America runs highest of all and keeps rising; the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia sit lower and flatter — and South Asia is the one region where emancipative values clearly fall.

World Bank regions; emancipative values (y014). Country estimates are computed first within each country×decade cell (effective n ≥ 100), then averaged with equal country weight inside the region. South Asia falls from 0.409 in the 1990s to 0.36 in the 2020s, a decline of 0.049. Source: WVS / EVS, weighted; region×decade cells span roughly 1,500 to 45,000 respondents.

The generation gap is closing, not opening

Difference in mean emancipative values between under-35s and over-55s, averaged across Western democracies, by survey year. Positive = the young are more emancipative.

Young minus old gap (West)

Takeaway: the youth-old gap was widest at the start of the series and has trended down as the value shift diffused into older cohorts — diffusion and saturation, not a runaway generational divide. The sharper backlash signal hides inside the cohorts themselves.

Within-country (under-35 mean minus over-55 mean), averaged with equal country weight across Western democracies per survey year. The gap narrowed from 0.122 in 1981 to 0.048 in 2022, a fall of 0.074 (fitted slope about −0.002 per year). Source: WVS / EVS, weighted; per-year n ranges from roughly 1,560 to 3,900.