ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on inter- and intra-cohort inequalities of living standards in a comparative perspective, and underlines the diversity of national responses to the challenges of economic slow down, stronger economic competition and globalization and their implications on different age groups. Although the paper is based on incomes and on the size of budgets more than on life styles, the relation with consumption is more than implicit since the economic constraint is the major factor affecting consumption. Here, the aim is to connect the specificities of national Welfare regimes and the emergence in different countries of very specific patterns of cohort-based economic constraints, which are about to produce, in fine, specific social generations (Mannheim, 1928). I highlight the emergence of “scarring effects”; that is the irreversible consequences of (short term) social fluctuations in the context of socialization on the (long term) life chances of different birth cohorts. These scarring effects can affect specific birth cohorts in countries where the welfare regime provides the context for increasing polarization between middle-aged insiders and young outsiders and is characterized by a lack of resilience to early career difficulties faced by cohorts of young adults.
