Intergenerational Emotional Fiscal Dynamics (IEFD)

The Intergenerational Emotional Fiscal Dynamics (IEFD) develops a three-generation model for understanding how emotional burden is carried forward across time rather than remaining confined to a single relational setting. While it remains connected to the broader emotional fiscal framework, its central concern is intergenerational transmission: how emotional deficits accumulate, converge, and eventually become visible as concentrated psychological breakdown in later generations. The paper argues that intergenerational transmission does not occur through a simple repetition of the same burden, but through a shifting fiscal process in which different generations inherit different positions within the system. This intergenerational movement is driven by two distinct fiscal mechanisms. Alongside emotional taxation as a steady extraction mechanism, IEFD introduces a second process of shock-driven devaluation, through which care, worth, or relational return can be abruptly withdrawn under pressure. Together, these mechanisms help explain how emotional deficit can remain latent for long periods before intensifying into a more visible form of collapse. Rather than treating psychological breakdown as an isolated event, IEFD situates it as the downstream outcome of cumulative emotional fiscal pressure. In this sense, the model links intergenerational transmission to delayed visibility: what appears suddenly in one generation may in fact be the endpoint of burdens accumulated, displaced, and re-concentrated across several. This framework also provides the theoretical bridge to later empirical work on hidden vulnerability, delayed symptom visibility, and the detection of internalised burden before crisis becomes overt.