ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on inter- and intra-cohort inequalities of living standards in a comparative perspective, and underlines the diversity of national responses to the challenges of economic slow down, stronger economic competition and globalization and their implications on different age groups. It also focuses on incomes and on the size of budgets more than on life styles, the relation with consumption is more than implicit since the economic constraint is the major factor affecting consumption. The aim is to connect the specificities of national Welfare regimes and the emergence in different countries of very specific patterns of cohort-based economic constraints, which are about to produce, in fine, specific social generations. The chapter highlights the emergence of "scarring effects"; that is the irreversible consequences of social fluctuations in the context of socialization on the life chances of different birth cohorts. France could be an exception about to experience exceptional inter-cohort inequalities.
