Trade shocks and relative consumption : why the European middle class is turning (far) right

This paper relates far-right political preferences to changes in relative consumption stemming from trade exposure to low-quality producers such as China. The availability of more affordable varieties benefits the poor, while low-to-middle income groups stand to lose from such import shocks. Relative consumption deprivation awakens their perception of losing out relative to other once marginalised groups in the same society. Resentment for status loss explains the recent rightward drift in politics that is then channelled into support for the far-right especially during the main part of the China shock from 2000 to 2006. I empirically explore this hypothesis by relating measures of relative consumption deprivation to survey-based data from the European Social Survey (ESS) on a sample of 18 European countries over 2002- 2014.