(Roughly) Daily

… and that could be an issue for the global order. People’s principles were expected to align as countries got richer; research suggests that instead they’re diverging. What happened?…

In 1981 over 40% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. But economic growth was starting to accelerate in developing countries. And Ron Inglehart, a professor at the University of Michigan, was organising a worldwide survey team to test the theory that, as peasant farmers escape poverty, they begin to think and behave differently, as people in the past had done when they joined the middle classes.

They might give a higher priority to education, to widening their children’s knowledge, than their own parents had done. They might give greater weight to their own experience and reasoning, and less to religious books or the authority of kings. And perhaps these new ways, these basic values, would begin to converge around the world. Such matters, Inglehart thought, could be tested by asking questions which revealed underlying values such as “How important is religion in your life?”, “Would you be happy living next to a foreigner?” and “Can you trust most people?”

Forty years later, only 8% of the world’s population is still in extreme poverty; more than half, on some measures, count as middle class. The World Values Survey (WVS), Inglehart’s baby, has become the world’s biggest social-research network. Every five years or so its researchers sally out into the field interviewing, at last count, almost 130,000 people in 90 countries. Yet its latest wave of results, which covers 2017-22, provides only partial endorsement of the idea that basic values tend to converge as people get richer. In significant ways, the differences between how people think in different parts of the world seem to be widening.

The Economist unpacks the data (with loads of helpful graphics), examines the possible causes at work, and looks to the future: “Western values are steadily diverging from the rest of the world’s” @TheEconomist.

* Gandhi

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As we contemplate culture, we might send carefully-observed birthday greetings to John Scott  CBE FRSA FBA FAcSS; he was born on this date in 1949. A sociologist, he is best known for his work on economic and social networks, perhaps especially The Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis and Conceptualising the Social World.

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