Marie Heldgaard Seestedt defends her PhD thesis at the Department of Political Science

A key question in society is how to allocate resources, not least between generations.

This is both a question of who gets what, but also of when they get it. In this dissertation, I examine attitudes on (re)distribution of resources between generations, both in the present, and in an intertemporal perspective, i.e. focusing on policies that come with short-term costs and long-term benefits. Political attitudes are important to understand in this regard, not just because they tells us something about how individuals perceive the world, but also because they are consequential for how we behave politically and what policies are viable. To strengthen our understanding of attitudes on inter-generational redistribution, I turn to an arena in which we often interact across generations:

the family. Our familial relations are often characterised by affection, and relations to family members in other age group can influence our ability to figure out the needs of other generations and our willingness to support policies that benefit them. When examining how family ties to other generations influence attitudes on redistribution across generations, I look both at older and younger generations, but focus especially on younger family members, in particular grandchildren. In terms of policy areas, I focus on welfare policies, including spending on childcare, education, elder care, health care and public pensions, and climate change mitigation and environmental protection.

The dissertation is article-based and consists of a project frame and three research articles, all of which are solo-authored. Each of the three articles are self-contained with their own specific focus, research question, analysis, and conclusions. However, the articles all speak to the same overall question of (re)distribution of resources across generations. In the frame, I outline some overall considerations that cuts across the articles, both theoretically and empirically. Moreover, I describe the key findings and main contributions, both separately for each article and cutting across them.

In paper A, I examine how our familial relations to individuals in specific age groups are linked to both how we perceive the age group and attitudes on welfare policies benefiting individuals in this group. I do this looking at both whether individuals have family members in certain age groups, but

also how close their family relations are. I study this using data from the European Social Survey. Overall, I find family relations to matter for overall affection towards- and perceptions of other age groups as well as for attitudes on redistribution to younger generations. I also find that the closeness of our family relations, rather than their sheer existence, is a more important factor in this regard.

In paper B, I investigate how relations to younger family members influence opinion on intertemporal policies, specifically whether respondents are willing to bear cost today to ensure long-term longevity of welfare policies and climate change mitigation. I focus mainly on relations to grandchildren and examine both whether having grandchildren is associated with attitudes in

this regards but also, more importantly, if making considerations of grandchildren more salient influence opinion, using a novel survey experiment. I find that relations matter for both areas, both cross sectionally and experimentally, though the experimental evidence is somewhat stronger regarding climate change.

In paper C, I examine how relations to children and grandchildren influence opinion on environmentalism and climate change mitigation. For this, I utilise data from the Danish Administrative registries combined with social survey data from the Danish National Election Study and the European Value Study. The administrative registries contain detailed, high-quality data on family relations, including the exact timing of becoming a (grand)parent. This is used to create a more appropriate counterfactual to parents and grandparents in the survey. Overall, I do not find any differences between (grand)parents and non-(grand)parents in attitudes on climate change and environmentalism. However, some heterogeneous effects are found with level of education as

an important moderator for parenthood, while the link between grandparenthood and environmentalism is somewhat stronger at times when climate change is a salient issue.

Overall, the dissertation contributes to our understanding of attitudes on resource

allocation between generations by centring the role of inter-generational

family relations as an important sphere to take into account.