holds a PhD in Sociology from the Catholic University Leuven. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research. Her work has focused on social stratification and poverty, as well as methodological issues related to non-response and household income measurement in longitudinal panel studies. Acknowledgements: The research was partly funded by research project G0398.02 of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO). I am grateful for feedback by Jos Berghman, Ruud Muffels, Fiona Devine, Chris Whelan, Ides Nicaise & Jaak Billiet. The comments and suggestions of the two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged as well as the helpful tips by Mark Elliot and Mark Tranmer. All remaining errors are my own.

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Some participants of the public debate have argued that the world before and after the coronavirus crisis will look fundamentally different. An underlying assumption is that this crisis will alter public opinion in such a way that it leads to profound societal and political change. Scholarship suggests that while some policy preferences are quite volatile and prone to change under the influence of crises, core values formed during childhood are likely to remain stable. In this article, we test stability or change of a well-selected set of opinions and values before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We rely on a unique longitudinal panel study whereby the Dutch fieldwork of the European Values Study 2017 web survey serves as a baseline; respondents were re-approached in May 2020. The findings indicate that values remain largely stable. However, there is an increase in political support, confirming the so-called rally effect. We conclude our manuscript with a response to the futurists expecting changes in public opinion because of the coronavirus crisis.

This article complements existing life course research on poverty by looking at the typical income poverty trajectories during the first five years after experiencing a risky life event such as partnership dissolution and leaving the parental home. By broadening the time frame of research into poverty transitions, a more complete picture can be drawn of the poverty patterns related to these life events. Latent class analyses of the European Community Household Panel show that the poverty risk after experiencing a life course event is not equally large and long-lasting for everyone. Broadly, four comparable latent classes can be found across Germany, Spain, Denmark and the United Kingdom: persistent non-poor, persons with a transient Á or transient-recurrent Á poverty risk, persons with longer-term poverty risk and late poverty entrants. Yet, the size and occurrence of the latent classes differs between countries according to welfare regime. The article discusses country differences and social determinants of the different poverty trajectories.

While economic downturns have adverse effects on young people's life chances, empirical studies examining whether and to what extent human values, social attitudes and well‐being indicators respond to sudden economic shocks are scarce. To assess the claim that human values are less affected by economic shocks than social attitudes and well‐being, two distinct yet related studies based on the European Social Survey (ESS) are conducted. The first employs a fixed effects pseudo‐panel analysis of the 2008–2014 ESS‐waves to detect whether changes over time in the socio‐demographic group's unemployment risk and national youth unemployment affect individual dispositions to varying degrees. The second study captures micro‐ and cross‐national effects in the 2010 ESS cross‐section. Unique for this set‐up is that we can test whether the findings hold for over‐time changes in youth unemployment within countries (pseudo‐panel), as well as for cross‐country differences in youth unemployment (multilevel). Both studies indicate that political trust, satisfaction with the economy and subjective well‐being are lowered by economic risk and hardship, while social trust and self‐rated health are less affected by changes in youth unemployment. Secondly, human values are immune to economic risk, underscoring that values transcend specific situations and are therefore resistant against sudden economic shocks.

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Annual income data are typically provided with a time lag. This article reviews several ways of dealing with this time lag in the construction of annual household-based income measures for individual economic well-being. It also proposes an alternative method that yields better estimates for equivalized household income, especially in the case of household composition change. Next, the two most commonly applied income measures are compared to this alternative measure with empirical income data from the European Community Household Panel. This comparison reveals that ignoring the time lag and household changes leads to substantial bias in income and poverty estimates and to erroneous conclusions about the determinants of poverty entry. The evidence in this article will be useful to researchers who want to make a well-informed choice between different annual income measures. Copyright 2008 The Authors.

With the aftermath of the economic crisis starting to fold out, the extent and the conditions under which the experience of economic hardship thwarts subjective well-being spark academic interest. In this paper, we examine the cushioning impact of three immaterial buffers embedded within civil society-namely social networks, religiosity, and confidence in politics-in combination with the cushioning role of the welfare state. Analyzing the 2010 wave of the European Social Survey, the results confirm that the experience of economic hardship is inversely related to happiness. All three proposed protective measures cushion the negative impact of economic strain on happiness, whereby the positive effect of social networks and confidence in politics is stronger in countries with lower levels of social expenditure. The latter finding provides some evidence for the crowding out-thesis but mainly suggests that a strong welfare state can take over the role of protective buffers in civil society, which is helpful as such buffers are less present among the most vulnerable social groups. The results of the analysis are discussed in relation to social science research and public policy.