Keeping up with the Joneses? Perceptions of mobility and opportunity within local knowledge economies across Germany

Recent work on the rise of the knowledge economy has identified the importance of economic context in shaping individual perceptions and preferences. Combining novel survey and locally fine-grained data for the case of Germany, we analyze the association between local knowledge economies and individual perceptions of social mobility and economic opportunity. We find that individual perceptions of mobility, access to affordable housing, and employment security are negatively associated with thriving local knowledge economies. This finding is partly at odds with accounts of ‘aspirational voters’ being the beneficiaries of local economic growth. Rather, we interpret our findings as supporting the ‘status anxiety’ hypothesis, which attributes negative mobility perceptions with competition for scarce economic and social resources. In time, these perceptions can become fertile ground for the development of populist attitudes and vote choices.