We have looked at differences in emancipative values from a cross-sectional point of view. It is now time to change perspective and examine emancipative values in the longitudinal dimension. We analyze change in values over time, tracing the rise of emancipatory orientations over recent decades and generations.

Scholars have put much more effort into analyzing cultural differences than cultural change (Triandis 1995; Hofstede 2001 [1980]; Schwartz 2006). An exception is the work of Inglehart and a few other authors whose work indeed focuses on cultural change (Inglehart & Abramson 1999; Flanagan & Lee 2003; Inglehart & Welzel 2005; Inglehart 2008; Abramson 2013). The findings of this group improve our understanding of how lifecycle effects, period effects, and cohort effects play together in shaping value change. One key finding is that age-related differences in values do not reflect lifecycle dynamics, such that people always start out with more emancipatory orientations in young age and turn more conservative as they get older. Instead, the pattern that shows young people to hold emancipatory orientations more strongly than older people emerges when people from subsequent generations grow up under steadily improving living conditions. In short, cohort effects dominate over lifecycle effects.