Date of Award

Spring 6-1-2025

Document Type

Honors Project

University Scholars Director

Dr. Joshua Tom

First Advisor/Committee Member

Dr. Geri Mason

Keywords

Civil Unrest, Mobility, Economic Mobility, Violent Unrest, Peaceful Unrest

Abstract

Civil unrest is a global phenomenon that often emerges through a combination of grievances and opportunity sparking change. Civil unrest is often used as a tool by the populace to initiate political, societal, or economic transformation. Economic mobility or the belief in it is a key contributor to mitigating individuals’ level of grievances. This paper uses lagged panel analysis to investigate the question of how civil unrest affects economic mobility beyond the time of unrest. Civil unrest is associated with changes in economic mobility, varying between positive and negative associations based on the type of unrest. Analysis was conducted using the Cross-National Time-Series data set, World Bank GNI per capita data set, and World Inequality Database over the period of 1981 to 2012. Nine unrest variables were used to run the regressions: anti-government demonstrations, assassinations, general strikes, government crisis, guerilla warfare, purges, revolutions, riots, and a weighted index combining all eight variables along with a novel economic mobility index made up of change in proportion of income held by the bottom 50% of the population, change in proportion of income held by the top 10% of the population and change in GNI per capita. Five unrest variables were statistically significant. General strikes were negatively associated with change in the proportion of income held by the bottom 50% while guerilla warfare and the weighted conflict index were positively correlated with change in GNI per capita. Revolutions and assassinations were both negatively and positively associated with changes in economic mobility over time. These findings suggest that only specific types of civil unrest, particularly those that strongly destabilize institutions and government are associated with changes in economic mobility.

Comments

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Scholars Honors Program.

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Additional Rights Information

Copyright held by author.

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