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Unemployment, Immigration, and Populism

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Abstract

This paper examines how unemployment and cultural anxiety have triggered different dimensions of current populism in the United States. I exploit the great recession and the 2014 Northern Triangle immigrant influx to investigate the effects of recent unemployment and unauthorized immigration on attitudes related to populism. Recent unemployment during the great recession increased the probability of having attitudes against wealthy elites by 15 percentage points, connected with left-wing populism. Perceived economic unfairness is a mechanism. However, cultural anxiety, rather than economic distress, more likely led to the rise of over 10 percentage points in the probability of having anti-immigration attitudes, related to right-wing populism, during the influx. This study intentionally links distinct economic and cultural forces to different types of populism, while still accounting for their potential interaction effects. This strategy facilitates disentangling the economic and cultural triggers of populism.

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