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World Values Surveys (world + value_survey)
Selected AbstractsStructure versus culture again: Corporatism and the ,new politics' in 16 Western European countriesEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 5 2003Bojan Todosijevi This article analyzes the relationships between corporatism and ,new politics' using Siaroff's (1999) corporatism scores for 16 West European countries and data from Inglehart et al.'s (1998) World Value Survey. The results of the analysis show that corporatism is related to higher membership in peace movements and also to belief in the urgency of ecological problems. However, it is unrelated to postmaterialist values, votes for ,new parties', approval of the environmentalist and feminist movements, and willingness to contribute financially to environmental protection. The relationships between corporatism and ,new politics' is shown to be somewhat mediated by economic factors, while the hypothesis that postmaterialism is a principal factor behind the popularity of the new social movements is not substantiated. [source] Cultural versus reproductive success: Why does economic development bring new tradeoffs?AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009Lesley Newson Achievements that attract social rewards in developed countries, such as educational qualifications, a prestigious career, and the ability to acquire prestige goods, interfere with a woman's ability to achieve reproductive success. This tradeoff between cultural and reproductive success may have developed because economic development creates an evolutionarily novel social environment. In the social environment of developed countries, a far smaller proportion of social exchange is between kin than in the small-scale communities in which the human brain and behavior evolved. Evidence suggests that social interaction between non-kin is less likely to encourage behavior that enhances inclusive fitness. A model of the cultural change that is likely to result from this change in social influence suggests that beliefs and values will become increasingly less consistent with the pursuit of fitness (Newson et al. [2007]: Evol Hum Behav 28: 199,210). Responses to the World Value Survey, which has been carried out in over 70 countries, confirm a number of the predictions of this model. In countries where fertility began to decline more recently, people appear to perceive the costs of having children to be lower relative to the cost of childlessness and the benefits of being a parent. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Informal Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Entrepreneurship or Survivalist Strategy?ANALYSES OF SOCIAL ISSUES & PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2009Some Implications for Public Policy A central debate around labor market informality, which has enormous implications for the design and implementation of public policy, relates to the nature of informal employment. Is informal employment and, in particular, informal self-employment, a symptom and, at the same time, a reproductive factor of precariousness and inequality, as well as social and individual poverty? Or is it, on the contrary, a space of individual and social action that reflects economic initiative and business potential which, if channeled and fostered properly, could contribute to social and economic development and, consequently, to the reduction of inequality and poverty? In this article, the findings of the 2005 edition of the Mexican version of the World Value Survey,concerning relevant values and attitudes of informal participants in the labor force in Mexico,are used to assess whether informal self-employment is a reflection of incipient entrepreneurship and individual choice or, rather, a survival strategy forced on individuals by their precarious circumstances. This article explores the public policy implications of the results obtained. [source] The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition: The Spread of Post-Christian Spirituality in 14 Western Countries, 1981,2000JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 3 2007DICK HOUTMAN This article uses data from the World Values Survey to study the spread of post-Christian spirituality ("New Age") in 14 Western countries (1981,2000, N = 61,352). It demonstrates that this type of spirituality, characterized by a sacralization of the self, has become more widespread during the period 1981,2000 in most of these countries. It has advanced farthest in France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden. This spiritual turn proves a byproduct of the decline of traditional moral values and hence driven by cohort replacement. Spirituality's popularity among the well educated also emerges from the latter's low levels of traditionalism. These findings confirm the theory of detraditionalization, according to which a weakening of the grip of tradition on individual selves stimulates a spiritual turn to the deeper layers of the self. [source] Subjective Well-Being and PeaceJOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 2 2007Ed Diener Hierarchical generalized linear modeling was employed to examine the relations between person-level subjective well-being (SWB) and peace-relevant attitudes, and how these relations vary across nations in the World Values Survey. Person-level SWB was associated with more confidence in the government and armed forces, greater emphasis on postmaterialist values, stronger support for democracy, less intolerance of immigrants and racial groups, and greater willingness to fight for one's country. These associations were moderated at the nation level by liberal development, violent inequality, gross domestic product, and nation-level SWB. The moderator effects indicate that happy people are not completely blind to the conditions of their society and that their endorsement of peace attitudes is sensitive to whether the conditions for peace do exist. [source] Economic Inequality and Intolerance: Attitudes toward Homosexuality in 35 DemocraciesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2008Robert Andersen Using hierarchical linear models fitted to data from the World Values Survey and national statistics for 35 countries, this article builds on the postmaterialist thesis by assessing the impact of economic inequality across and within nations on attitudes toward homosexuality. It provides evidence that tolerance tends to decline as national income inequality rises. For professionals and managers, the results also support the postmaterialist argument that economic development leads to more tolerant attitudes. On the other hand, attitudes of the working class are generally less tolerant, and contrary to expectations of the postmaterialist thesis, are seemingly unaffected by economic development. In other words, economic development influences attitudes only for those who benefit most. These findings have political implications, suggesting that state policies that have the goal of economic growth but fail to consider economic inequality may contribute to intolerant social and political values, an attribute widely considered detrimental for the health of democracy. [source] Growing supranational identities in a globalising world?EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 5 2008A multilevel analysis of the World Values Surveys Using the World Values Surveys (WVS), this article shows that there is a global pattern in public attitudes toward supranational identity: the younger the respondent, the more supranational. Yet a life-cycle effect, as opposed to a generational one, underlies this pattern. A multilevel analysis confirms this age effect on supranational identification in 43 countries covered in the recent wave of the WVS, but provides little support for the idea that a country's integration into the global economy and world society promotes supranational attachments among mass publics, especially youths. Regional integration and globalisation appear either complementary or contradictory to this identity shift, depending upon how ordinary citizens perceive their country's involvement in the processes of regional integration and globalisation, respectively. [source] The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysisEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2003CHRISTIAN WELZEL This article demonstrates that socioeconomic development, emancipative cultural change and democratization constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress , a syndrome whose common focus has not been properly specified by classical modernization theory. We specify this syndrome as ,human development', arguing that its three components have a common focus on broadening human choice. Socioeconomic development gives people the objective means of choice by increasing individual resources; rising emancipative values strengthen people's subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization provides legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights. Analysis of data from the World Values Surveys demonstrates that the linkage between individual resources, emancipative values and freedom rights is universal in its presence across nations, regions and cultural zones; that this human development syndrome is shaped by a causal effect of individual resources and emancipative values on freedom rights; and that this effect operates through its impact on elite integrity, as the factor which makes freedom rights effective. [source] The Effect of Religiosity on Tax Fraud Acceptability: A Cross-National AnalysisJOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 3 2006STEVEN STACK Religion provides an important basis for social integration and the prevention of deviant behavior, such as tax fraud, a crime that costs society billions of dollars in lost revenue. The literature on tax fraud and tax fraud acceptability (TFA) has neglected religiosity as a social bond that may deter this type of behavior. Furthermore, existing work is based on the United States; there are no systematic cross-national studies. In particular, there is no research exploring the "moral communities" hypothesis that religiosity's effect on deviance will vary according to the strength of national moral communities. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature by analyzing data on 45,728 individuals in 36 nations from the World Values Surveys. We control for other predictors of TFA, including social bonds, economic strain, and demographic factors. The results determined that the higher the individual's level of religiosity, the lower the TFA. Results on the moral community's hypothesis were mixed. However, in a separate analysis of individual nations, the presence of a "moral community" (majority of the population identifies with a religious group) explained 39 percent of the variation in the presence or absence of the expected religiosity-TFA relationship. Furthermore, the presence of a communist regime in a nation, often known for the oppression of religious groups who then may view the regime as illegitimate, diminished the impact of religion on TFA. [source] Prosocial to Egoistic Enculturation of Our Children: A Climato-Economic ContextualizationNEGOTIATION AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT RESEARCH, Issue 2 2009Evert Van de Vliert Abstract Are altruistic, cooperative, apathetic, and egoistic cultures passed on from generation to generation in nongenetic ways? A society-level analysis of data from the most recent World Values Surveys showed that adults in increasingly demanding cold or hot climates value cooperative enculturation of children to the extent that their society is richer, but egoistic enculturation to the extent that their society is poorer. These results refine the climatic demands,resources theory of prosociality, which posits that (a) humans in more demanding,colder or hotter,climates find it more difficult to satisfy homeostatic needs for thermal comfort, nutrition, and health; (b) increasingly demanding climates matched by wealth-based resources and availability of homeostatic goods produce more prosocial cultures; and (c) increasingly demanding climates unmatched by wealth-based resources and availability of homeostatic goods produce less prosocial cultures. [source] Unravelling the dynamics and trends of social capital: Case of South KoreaASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Jaechul Lee Analyzing the World Values Surveys, the present study reveals how Korean people trust their fellow citizens and participate in associations in the process of democratization. It has been argued that trust and participation in voluntary associations go hand in hand. Although results revealed a remarkable growth of participation in voluntary associations since democratization, the level of trust has not increased. Instead, it declined sharply during the same period. A further analysis found no obvious connection between levels of civic activism and interpersonal trust, as suggested in the theoretical literature. Contrary to what has been argued in the literature, face-to-face interactions within voluntary associations have not occasioned these civic activists in Korea to greater trust in one another. [source] TRUST, INEQUALITY AND THE SIZE OF THE CO-OPERATIVE SECTOR: CROSS-COUNTRY EVIDENCEANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2009Derek C. Jones ABSTRACT:,We provide the first empirical evidence on the determinants of differences in the size of the cooperative sector around the world. Our key data have been recently released by the ICA and are integrated with other standard sources, such as data from the World Values surveys. In our empirical work we concentrate on the links between inequality and trust and cooperative incidence and undertake selectivity correction estimates as well as a series of robustness checks. Consistent with theory we find strong support for the proposition that trust plays a causal role in accounting for differences in co-operative incidence. Also consistent with theory, we find support (albeit much weaker) for the role of inequality. Further support for our findings flows from our estimates for conventional, listed firms, where we do not find that trust and inequality play similar roles in accounting for the variation in the incidence of large listed firms across countries. [source] | ||||||||||||||||