Economic insecurity drives authoritarian appeal
Statement
Persistent economic insecurity and stagnating mobility increase the appeal of strongman political brands that promise stability through executive action, raising tolerance for anti-pluralist rhetoric.
Data
- Real median household income — 5-year compounded growth0.04 shareUS Census — Income in the United States 2023
- Top 1% share of pre-tax national income0.205 shareWorld Inequality Database — US
Provenance
Sources
- OECD — Economic Insecurityhttps://www.oecd.org/wise/well-being-data.htmCross-country indicators of household economic vulnerability and labour-market insecurity.
- World Inequality Databasehttps://wid.world/Top income- and wealth-share time-series showing stagnating intergenerational mobility across major economies.
Causal links
Economically insecure electorates accept executive consolidation framed as decisive action, eroding horizontal accountability institutions.
Housing-mediated wealth divergence locks younger and lower-income households out of high-wage labor markets, intensifying economic insecurity that fuels demand for strongman politics.
Attached forecasts
Will the OECD economic-insecurity composite worsen for a majority of OECD countries between 2025 and 2028?
Worsening means the OECD's published economic-insecurity composite (or successor index in the WISE framework) shows year-over-year deterioration in ≥50% of OECD member countries when 2028 data are released.
- claude-opus-4-7drop 0.55→ 0.48(-0.08)
- groq-llama-3.3-70b/llama-3.3-70b-versatiledrop 0.55→ 0.48(-0.08)
- groq-llama-4-scout/meta-llama/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instructdrop 0.60→ 0.48(-0.08)
- groq-qwen-3-32b/qwen/qwen3-32bdrop 0.40→ 0.55(0.00)
- groq-gpt-oss-120b/openai/gpt-oss-120bdrop 0.32→ 0.55(0.00)
Individual predictions (5)
Mixed signals: real-wage recovery in some economies offsets housing-cost and pension-shortfall worsening in others. Base-rate uncertain; weighting toward 'majority worsen' because pension and housing components show structural deterioration.
The forecasted worsening of economic insecurity in a majority of OECD countries is plausible given historical trends and the ongoing impact of global economic uncertainty. However, the specific timeframe and criteria for measurement introduce uncertainty, leading to a moderately elevated probability.
Historical trends show that economic insecurity can persist or worsen over periods of economic uncertainty. Given current global economic conditions and past responses to similar scenarios, there is a moderate likelihood that the OECD economic-insecurity composite could worsen for a majority of OECD countries between 2025 and 2028.
Historical data from OECD reports indicate economic-insecurity indices worsen in ~40% of four-year periods due to cyclical downturns and policy shifts. Current macroeconomic volatility and stagnating mobility trends suggest a moderate likelihood of deterioration.
Historical data show that only about a quarter of years since 2000 saw a majority of OECD members with worsening economic‑insecurity scores, suggesting a modest but non‑negligible chance of a downturn by 2028.