Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and perceived intergenerational mobility in Czechia and Uruguay. An unexpected event during survey design study

Can large-scale geopolitical shocks causally reshape how individuals perceive their intergenerational mobility? War unsettles everyday life through security fears, policy uncertainty, inflation, and energy shocks—factors that can recalibrate the benchmarks people use when comparing their lives to their parents’. We address this question by examining the immediate impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on mobility perceptions using a quasi-experimental design. Leveraging World Values Survey fieldwork occurring in Czechia and Uruguay around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we compare respondents interviewed immediately before and after February 24, 2022 within an unexpected event during survey design. Using the quasi-random interview dates around the invasion, we find consistent null effects across multiple specifications—including bandwidth sensitivity analyses, logit models, robust bias-corrected estimates, demographic controls, and placebo tests. The invasion produced no discernible immediate impact on either upward or downward mobility perceptions in either country, despite Czechia’s geographic proximity and historical ties to the region. These findings complement prior correlational evidence showing associations between war concerns and mobility beliefs one year after the invasion, suggesting that such effects may unfold gradually rather than instantaneously, or that correlational patterns reflect selection into worry rather than immediate causal impacts. By establishing a causal upper bound on the immediate effect of invasion exposure on mobility perceptions, our findings constrain the plausible magnitude of causal effects in a literature built primarily on observational evidence.