Can Short-Term Economic Fluctuations Stimulate Identity-Based Rights Movements? — Evidence from the United States

The social movement literature has long debated whether deteriorating economic conditions drive social movements, but empirical evidence remains inconclusive, and evidence concerning identity-based rights movements is particularly scarce. This study examines whether short-term economic fluctuations help explain changes in the frequency of contemporary identity-based rights movement activity, using the United States as the research setting and focusing on feminist, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ movements. The study conducts dynamic regression analysis using first differences, lagged dependent variables, monthly seasonal control variables, and Newey-West heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation robust standard errors. The results show that social movement activity tends to be followed by a decline in activity frequency after periods of high-frequency activity, with significant seasonality; for example, August 2020 and August 2021 marked the beginning of two-month declines. Meanwhile, none of the short-term economic change factors exhibited statistically significant associations. These findings contribute to a broader macro-level understanding of identity-based rights movements.