Economic Hardship Triggers Identification with Disadvantaged Minorities

• DOI: 10.1086/685586
• Publication Date: 2016-05-05T11:40:47Z
• Authors: Gábor Simonovits; Gábor Kézdi
• Keywords: 4. Education; 05 social sciences; 1. No poverty; 10. No inequality; 0506 political science; 3. Good health

We explore the effect of economic hardship on the identification with a disadvantaged ethnic minority using longitudinal data on 10,000 adolescents in Hungary. Fixed-effects and first-differenced panel models show that adolescents having Roma descent are more likely to identify as Roma when their families experience economic hardship, an effect strongest among adolescents with mixed-ethnicity parents. Adolescents who identify as Roma are substantially less prejudiced against the Roma and less supportive of exclusionary policies than those with Roma descent but not identifying as Roma. These findings support self-perception-based theories of ethnic identification and imply that changes in ethnic identity can reinforce stereotypes.