Ronald Inglehart in The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (1977)

This theory of intergenerational value change has two key hypotheses: (1) that an individual's priorities reflect the socioeconomic environment, with individuals placing the greatest subjective value on those things that are in relatively short supply, and (2) that the relationship between socioeconomic environment and value priorities involves a substantial time lag because one's basic values reflect the conditions that prevailed during one's preadult years.