Immigration and inbreeding

Over the last few years, the indefatigable chickadee has been telling a story about the marriage (heh) between outbreeding and modernity. In fairness to her, the approach she takes is informational, not polemical, and that conclusion is mine, not (necessarily) her's. But it's difficult not to come to that pithy conclusion regardless.

My childish infatuation with the ancients aside, I like modernity. It's not all good, though--ennui, atomization, ethno-masochism--and, apparently, the relinquishing of any sort of serious national sovereignty, solidarity, or identity. Taking the citizenship standards index values* from a post derived from World Values Survey responses and correlating them with consanguinity rates (defined as second-cousin or closer), both at the national level, yields a statistically significant positive correlation of .59 (p = .003) among the 23 countries for which both consanguinity and WVS data are available. That is, the more inbred a country is, the more restrictive the attitudes of its population are on the issues of immigration and citizenship. Conversely, the more outbred a country is, the more its inhabitants tend toward unrestricted open borders.

If you'll allow me to shamelessly quote myself:

The paradox presented here for many like myself is that the places inspiring the warmest feelings and that I would like most to live in are the places that tend to put the least effort into maintaining what they have. It's tragic.

Or maybe I'm just a retrograde troglodyte covetously trying to keep to and for myself what my ancestors rapaciously stole from the brotherhood, er, and sisterhood, of mankind humankind. I suppose I should be smart enough to know better--the inverse correlation between estimated average IQ and citizenship standards scores for the same 23 countries is a statistically significant .70 (p = .0002) at the national level. The higher the country's IQ, the more likely its people are to wave the huddled masses on through.

* See here.

** Calculated by obtaining the simple, unweighted averages of all studies reported at consang.net.

Law alone?

With a victorious--if only symbolic, temporary, and ultimately futile--stand against amnesty looking to be secured thanks to the majority of Republicans in the House, the only part of the federal government I still have any hope at all in (and that hope is shaky to say the least), let's take a look at international sentiments towards the requirements for citizenship.

In the most recent wave conducted by the WVS, running from 2005-2008, respondents were asked about the importance of four factors in deciding whether or not a person should have citizenship conferred upon him. They were having ancestors from the country, being born in the country, adopting the customs of the country, and obeying the laws of the country. Pithily, the angles we're exploring here are blood, soil, culture, and law. The first table shows the percentages of respondents in each participating country who judged it to be "very important" that a person have ancestors from the country to be considered a citizen of it:

Blood	%VI
Mali	74.1
Morocco	66.9
Egypt	63.9
Burkina Faso	61.6
South Africa	61.1
Thailand	57.1
India	56.6
Jordan	54.2
Ghana	52.9
Indonesia	51.6
Ethiopia	51.3
Mexico	50.3
Malaysia	50.1
Vietnam	47.3
Georgia	46.2
Rwanda	46.1
Zambia	42.8
Cyprus	41.3
China	39.3
Uruguay	37.6
Poland	37.5
Turkey	34.4
Chile	33.4
Trinidad and Tobago	26.9
Bulgaria	26.6
Spain	25.3
South Korea	24.6
Serbia	24.0
Ukraine	22.9
Argentina	21.2
Moldova	20.8
Slovenia	19.4
Brazil	18.5
Romania	17.9
Italy	14.6
United States	14.1
Australia	11.3
Taiwan	10.2
Germany	9.6
Finland	9.4
Norway	6.7
Andorra	4.9
Switzerland	4.5
Sweden	3.3

People of northwestern European descent put the least emphasis on the blood bond of a nation's population. The US is no exception. After all, how can a nation of immigrants, which we've always been since we gained our independence from Great Britain in 1923, prefer that its citizens' family trees be rooted firmly in the land of amber waves of grain? To the contrary, those people are the ones we look down upon with the most superciliousness and disdain today. Northwestern Euros are followed by central, southern and eastern Europeans, then Asians and Latin Americans, and finally by Middle Easterners and Africans, who put the greatest amount of emphasis on it.

There's a pattern here that surely doesn't come as much of a surprise to regular readers of the chickadee's blog. Relatedly, this list looks like it proxies pretty well for a measure of national pride. Parenthetically, I plan on correlating these results with reported rates of consanguinity by country.

The paradox presented here for many like myself is that the places inspiring the warmest feelings and that I would like most to live in are the places that tend to put the least effort into maintaining what they have. It's tragic. It doesn't strike me as overly cynical to presume that this is almost inevitable, as though liberalism doesn't know when or where to stop and just keeps cruising along the progressive highway past the promised land and over the cliff. Unfortunately, the one nation that regularly pops up as an exception to the putative rule in discussions like this was not included in this battery of questions. But even Japan has started down the slippery slope towards open immigration, recently introducing a point system, akin to the policies employed in Australia and Canada, where preference is given to highly skilled prospective immigrants.

What of birthright citizenship? Our own 14th amendment has been read by the courts in such a way that if one is able to spawn somewhere in the country, through hook, crook or otherwise, then said spawn is, jus soli, a child of the land he was born on.

The next table shows the percentages of respondents in each participating country who deemed it very important that a person be born in the country if he is to be entitled to citizenship:

Soil	%VI
Mali	68.5
South Africa	67.8
Ghana	67.7
India	66.3
Zambia	63.0
Malaysia	60.1
Thailand	59.4
Egypt	58.6
Mexico	58.5
Jordan	58.3
Indonesia	56.9
Ethiopia	53.9
Rwanda	52.3
Morocco	51.0
Burkina Faso	48.9
Chile	47.5
Georgia	45.5
Trinidad and Tobago	44.1
Uruguay	43.2
Vietnam	42.6
Poland	40.4
Spain	39.2
China	38.4
Cyprus	37.5
Turkey	34.3
Italy	32.1
Moldova	31.9
Serbia	28.4
Ukraine	28.3
Bulgaria	26.9
Romania	25.5
United States	25.3
Argentina	24.9
Brazil	23.5
Slovenia	22.9
South Korea	20.5
Andorra	17.7
Taiwan	16.0
Australia	15.7
Finland	15.7
Germany	11.4
Switzerland	8.4
Norway	7.9
Sweden	5.0

Keep in mind that the four categories considered here are not mutually exclusive, but can and do layer upon one another. It appears that most Malians, for example, feel it of great importance that citizens be born in the country, to people who have previously established ancestral ties to it, adopt Malian cultural norms, and that they respect the law of the great trading empire.

The following table shows the percentages of respondents in each participating country who deemed it very important that a person adopt the customs of the country to become a citizen of it:

Culture	%VI
Georgia	83.6
Mali	73.3
Egypt	68.7
Morocco	68.4
Australia	68.0
Ghana	66.5
Thailand	65.0
Turkey	63.6
Vietnam	63.4
Jordan	61.9
Indonesia	61.9
Malaysia	60.4
South Africa	59.4
Burkina Faso	59.4
United States	59.4
India	58.4
Mexico	58.2
Zambia	56.8
Ethiopia	53.9
Germany	53.4
Bulgaria	53.3
Chile	50.3
Slovenia	48.2
Spain	47.2
Rwanda	46.8
Finland	46.6
China	44.1
Uruguay	43.3
Cyprus	43.0
Trinidad and Tobago	42.8
Switzerland	42.1
Taiwan	39.9
Ukraine	39.5
Moldova	38.5
Norway	36.7
Romania	35.7
Poland	34.7
Italy	34.7
Argentina	33.6
Serbia	33.5
Andorra	30.4
South Korea	27.1
Brazil	26.3
Sweden	24.1

Are we all Georgians now, senator?

I've always felt a special affinity for Australia. If I were to leave the US, I'd head down under (Switzerland would be a close second, but the cultural and linguistic distances would probably be too far). It may not count for much of anything in the grand scheme of things, but they are one of the few Occidental nations whose population still maintains, with some pride, a semblance of a revered, historically-rooted national identity (the others being Israel, Ireland--dare I say--these United States, and possibly Germany). That shows up here.

With the importance of blood ties to citizenship being an idea entertained only by the most reprobate--hell, even the idea of citizenship is becoming beyond the pale--the concept of a national culture is the next wall the forces of the Cathedral are determined to scale. They've already infiltrated so far that only the most 'extreme' talkers on the mainstream right would call for a national policy resting on the three xenophobic pillars of borders, language, and, most germanely for us, culture!

Up to this point, our Scandinavian representatives haven't shown support for any standards on citizenship at all. But we have yet to discuss governmental policies. The Golem will keep the baddies out, we just need to equip him with the right tools. And then make sure he doesn't strike out against refugees--political, economic, religious, or otherwise--or those offended by depictions of Muhammad, or undocumented workers, or visa overstayers, or asylum seekers, or those looking for a better life, or those who love to feed from the public trough, or...

Law	%VI
Sweden	95.6
Norway	93.5
Australia	93.1
Finland	88.4
Switzerland	87.6
Taiwan	86.7
United States	85.0
Georgia	84.6
Germany	83.5
Trinidad and Tobago	83.2
Indonesia	82.9
Turkey	82.4
Bulgaria	82.1
Mali	81.7
Mexico	80.8
Ghana	80.4
Romania	78.7
China	78.2
Burkina Faso	78.1
Vietnam	78.0
Italy	77.7
Jordan	77.3
Egypt	76.9
Malaysia	74.8
Morocco	74.6
Uruguay	74.1
South Africa	72.9
Chile	71.3
Slovenia	71.2
India	70.9
Zambia	70.4
Moldova	68.1
Poland	68.1
Ethiopia	64.7
Argentina	63.5
Rwanda	62.1
Ukraine	58.7
Cyprus	58.2
Spain	58.1
Serbia	55.0
Thailand	54.4
Andorra	49.4
Brazil	43.5
South Korea	40.4

Several charts in rapid succession there, so here's an overall "standards" index that simply sums the percentages of "very important" responses across the four dimensions considered previously. How curious that Mexicans make greater demands of their citizens than Americans do of their's:

Standards	Index
Mali	297.6
Egypt	268.1
Ghana	267.5
South Africa	261.2
Morocco	260.9
Georgia	259.9
Indonesia	253.3
India	252.2
Jordan	251.7
Burkina Faso	248.0
Mexico	247.8
Malaysia	245.4
Thailand	235.9
Zambia	233.0
Vietnam	231.3
Ethiopia	223.8
Turkey	214.7
Rwanda	207.3
Chile	202.5
China	200.0
Uruguay	198.2
Trinidad and Tobago	197.0
Bulgaria	188.9
Australia	188.1
United States	183.8
Poland	180.7
Cyprus	180.0
Spain	169.8
Slovenia	161.7
Finland	160.1
Moldova	159.3
Italy	159.1
Germany	157.9
Romania	157.8
Taiwan	152.8
Ukraine	149.4
Norway	144.8
Argentina	143.2
Switzerland	142.6
Serbia	140.9
Sweden	128.0
South Korea	112.6
Brazil	111.8
Andorra	102.4

Things are grim on this side of the pond, but they're even grimmer in Europe. With the rise of nationalist parties in several European countries, I wonder when (or if) we'll begin to see the same.

SWPLs, stop emulating the Swedes and start taking after the Andorrans!

WVS variables used: V217, V218, V219, V220

Indonesia's Islamic spirit of tolerance

Writing at Secular Right, Andrew Stuttaford quotes Barack Obama on Indonesia:

Those things that I learned to love about Indonesia — that spirit of tolerance that is written into your constitution, symbolized in your mosques and churches and temples standing alongside each other; that spirit that is embodied in your people — that still lives on.

When evaluating flattering fluff like this, my instinct is to try and quantifiably evaluate how much truth, if any, it contains. When the subject is international in scope, the World Values Survey, imperfect and eccentric though it may be, is one of the best places to turn. In the most recent wave spanning the years 2005-2008, it asked respondents in several countries how much they trust people of a different religion than their own. There were four possible responses. I've assigned them scores of 3, 2, 1, and 0 for "trust completely", "trust a little", "trust not very much", and "not trust at all", respectively, to create a simple trust index that shows each country's mean score:

Country	Tolerance
1. Sweden	2.03
2. New Zealand	2.01
3. France	1.99
4. Norway	1.90
5. Great Britain	1.87
6. Mali*	1.85
7. Finland	1.85
8. United States	1.81
9. Canada	1.80
10. Australia	1.74
11. Switzerland	1.72
12. Andorra	1.71
13. South Africa	1.70
14. Rwanda	1.67
15. Argentina	1.63
16. Trinidad and Tobago	1.60
17. Burkina Faso	1.55
18. Uruguay	1.52
19. Ghana	1.50
20. Taiwan	1.42
21. Serbia	1.41
22. Poland	1.40
23. Brazil	1.40
24. Netherlands	1.38
25. Spain	1.37
26. India	1.36
27. Ethiopia	1.36
28. South Korea	1.35
29. Bulgaria	1.35
30. Indonesia	1.32
31. Georgia	1.31
32. Germany	1.30
33. Ukraine	1.27
34. Zambia	1.26
35. Italy	1.26
36. Malaysia	1.23
37. Chile	1.21
38. Egypt	1.21
39. Thailand	1.16
40. Colombia	1.15
41. Russia	1.15
42. Vietnam	1.15
43. Slovenia	1.11
44. Romania	1.10
45. Jordan	1.05
46. Mexico	1.02
47. Turkey	1.01
48. Cyprus	1.00
49. Moldova	0.98
50. Morocco	0.91
51. Peru	0.89
52. China	0.89

Coming in at 30 of 52 countries, Indonesia is rather middling in terms of attitudinal religious tolerance. It does better than four (or possibly five) of the six other Muslim countries on the list--Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey. *The data on Mali may have been transcribed backwards. If so, it should be placed in the company of Russia and Vietnam, which means Indonesia deserves its designation as a "moderate Muslim" country. The Mali data may be correct, on the other hand, as its responses are similar to those reported in Burkina Faso, a country that is 60% Muslim. When dealing with reliable data on Africa, a healthy dose of skepticism is always in order.

All religions are not created equal, however, and Indonesia comes in well below the Anglophone (read Christian and post-Christian) nations. By the standards Obama has grown up observing, Indonesian attitudes can hardly be said to foster a "spirit of tolerance".

Parenthetically, the Han Chinese are nationalistic, a substantial number of Germans agree with Thilo Sarrazin, Sweden is the most tolerant place in the universe, and some values do indeed stop at the Rio Grande.

WVS variables used: V129

Gypped by Japan

As an addendum to Half Sigma's paean to Japan, a reason I'm a favorably inclined comes from the WVS. The fifth and most recent wave includes a question querying respondents on how they feel about their respective countries providing foreign aid. Specifics aren't given, and the amount is simply .1% of each respective country's "national income" (stated on a per capita basis so as not to skew the results towards a larger population leading to less putative generosity), so it's basically a measure of magnanimity towards the rest of the world at the expense of the homeland's fiscal health. The following table ranks countries in which the question was asked (the affluent ones plus, oddly, Thailand) by what I'll call a sucker index, computed by simply taking the percentage of people who think that defined amount is "too low" and subtracting from it the percentage who deem it "too high":

Country	Sucker score
1) Andorra	70.5
2) Switzerland	45.9
3) Spain	45.5
4) Sweden	43.6
5) Norway	38.3
6) Australia	31.0
7) Finland	29.5
8) Canada	27.4
9) Germany	20.6
10) Thailand	9.9
11) United States	8.5
12) Japan	(1.6)

Germany's nicer than we are and they still get called Nazis by Greeks with their hands out. Time for us to start listening to Rand Paul and for the West to start sharing more of the Japanese sentiment.

WVS variables used: V175

Buy you a new life

Moved by data rather than doctrine, Inductivist listed the percentages of respondents in the World Values Survey who said "wanting to get rich" sounded either "very much like me" or "like me" by country. Despite the putative obsession Americans have with money, the US ranks 41st out of 52 countries when it comes to (admitting to) really wanting the benjamins.

A cursory glance at the list is enough to see that the poorer, less desirable the place, the stronger the predilection of its population for wanting money is. If you have little to lose, might as well get rich or die trying! Quantifying it, the correlation between a country's purchasing power parity and the percentage of its population wanting to get rich is .68 (p = 0).

I hear Art Alexakis singing "I hate those people who love to tell you that money is the root of all that kills/They have never been poor, they have never had the joy of a welfare Christmas".

WVS variables used: V81(1-2)(3-6)

Liberalism rankings by country

Expanding on the idea from a previous post showing that America's Religious Right is more permissive than moderate Muslims throughout the Islamic world are, I'll take a stab at sorting countries by attitudes on social issues.

The formula is simple. The WVS asks a series of questions on the justifiability of several different actions and behaviors. Taking the mean responses to the queries on homosexuality, prostitution, abortion, divorce, euthanasia, suicide, and wife beating (inverted)--all on a 10-point scale--and then averaging those, we get a liberalism index score for each country. The higher the score, the more permissive* the inhabitants of the country are. All countries that participated in the fifth wave of the survey, conducted between 2005-2008, for which data on all seven actions and behaviors are available are included with the exception of poor, corrupted Slovenia:

Country	Liberalism
1. Andorra	6.9
2. Sweden	6.7
3. Switzerland	6.2
4. Netherlands	6.1
5. Norway	6.1
6. France	5.9
7. Spain	5.7
8. Australia	5.7
9. Germany	5.5
10. Great Britain	5.5
11. Finland	5.4
12. Uruguay	5.3
13. Canada	5.1
14. Japan	4.9
15. Bulgaria	4.9
16. United States	4.8
17. Argentina	4.7
18. Serbia	4.6
19. Taiwan	4.4
20. Mexico	4.4
21. Chile	4.4
22. Russia	4.2
23. Cyprus	4.1
24. South Korea	4.1
25. Brazil	4.0
25. Italy	4.0
27. Ukraine	4.0
28. Poland	3.8
29. India	3.8
30. Mali	3.6
30. Moldova	3.6
32. Zambia	3.6
33. Colombia	3.5
34. Malaysia	3.5
35. South Africa	3.5
36. Thailand	3.4
37. Romania	3.4
38. Trinidad and Tobago	3.1
39. Turkey	3.0
40. Vietnam	3.0
41. Ghana	2.9
42. Burkina Faso	2.9
42. China	2.9
44. Iran	2.9
45. Georgia	2.8
46. Ethiopia	2.8
47. Indonesia	2.6
48. Rwanda	2.5
49. Jordan	2.2

The Occident occupies all the top spots, especially its Northwestern European contingent. The US is a bit more conservative than Northwestern Europe is, but more permissive than some places on the Old Continent are and way more so than most of the rest of the world is. Catholic Italy and Poland are more in line with the more open places in Central Europe and South America. South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East populate the socially conservative bottom of the list. The East Asian progression, with Japan as the most liberalized, with South Korea following several notches below and China quite a bit farther down than that, meshes well with the idea that as a country becomes more industrialized and developed, it becomes less patriarchal.

Speaking of the patriarchy, let's revisit a subject dealt with by Steve Sailer in his famous article The Return of Patriarchy? and add another data point suggesting that the kinds of conservative Steve prefers aren't the ones who are doing their best to inherit the earth. The correlation between the liberalism index and total fertility rate is an inverse .41 (p = 0)--a moderate relationship, but perhaps a deceptively modest one on account of old Soviet countries getting on board with the free world when it comes to staying out of the birthing ward, but not when it comes to accepting buggery or refraining from hitting one's wife.

WVS variables used: V202, V203, V204, V205, V206, V207, V208

* Dan H. made a good point regarding the slate of actions and behaviors being examined, namely that they are Eurocentric (because societies of European descent are really the only ones with both the interest and wherewithal to carry these sorts of surveys out):

These are softball questions for the Muslim societies. The real questions that show how illiberal many Muslims really are, are not even asked in the World Values Survey.

Questions such as: should someone face death for leaving the faith (Islam or Christianity, respectively)?

Results you get are 76% in Pakistan, 84% in Egypt and 86% in Jordan, three illiberal countries.

...

In America I have lived 33 years and interacted with tens of thousands in my lifetime and never known of anyone who believed in death as punishment for leaving the faith.

By this measure, ~80% of Muslims are less liberal than the most illiberal American. The most illiberal Christian I can think of Terry Jones, the illiberal pastor in Florida, has not gone as far as 80% of Muslims.

Religious conservatives in the US more liberal than the Muslim masses are

Addressing the oft made assertion (or at least insinuation) "that conservative American Protestants are roughly equivalent with conservative Muslims", Razib tapped the World Values Survey to compare the positions of conservative Protestants in the US with those of Muslims in predominately Islamic countries on some representative social issues. He presents a table that shows all scaled response distributions for each group on each question.

Below, I essentially replicate his results with the purpose of trying to reproduce them in a way that is a little easier for mere mortals like myself to digest. Instead of showing the entire distribution, I use mean values for each group. Razib concludes:

The general qualitative result: American conservative Protestants are in the main to the center or social liberal end of Muslim public opinion. They are not comparable at all to Muslim reactionaries.

As the averages make clearer, conservative Protestants (defined here as those who expressed a preference for the Republican party) are in fact more liberal on each of these issues than Muslims in any of the countries included are. Keep in mind, the comparison here is between conservative Protestants and all Muslims, not just between evangelicals and reactionary Islamists. The latter comparison would show conservative Protestants to be even more liberal relative to Muslims than this comparison does.

Finally, using standard deviation values reported in the WVS, each of the tables also shows where the average conservative Protestant fits into the Muslim distribution*. So, on the question of the justifiability of homosexuality, the average conservative American Protestant is at 71st percentile of the Muslim population. Because the wife-beating question is inverted, the figure shows where the average conservative Protestant falls on the another-black-eye-to-explain-to-the-neighbors-is-unjustifiable distribution. The higher the value (on a 1-10 scale), the more justifiable the act or behavior in question is viewed as being:

Homosexuality	Score
Conservative Protestants (US)	3.2
Malaysia (Muslim)	2.9
Jordan (Muslim)	1.0
Iran (Shia)	1.5
Turkey (Muslim)	1.7
Conservative Protestant percentile among Muslims	71st percentile

Abortion	Score
Conservative Protestants (US)	3.5
Malaysia (Muslim)	2.8
Iraq (Shia)	1.2
Iraq (Sunni)	2.4
Jordan (Muslim)	1.2
Iran (Shia)	2.3
Morocco (Muslim)	1.8
Turkey (Muslim)	2.3
Conservative Protestant percentile among Muslims	73rd percentile

Man to beat his wife	Score
Conservative Protestants (US)	1.3
Malaysia (Muslim)	3.1
Jordan (Muslim)	1.5
Iran (Shia)	1.8
Morocco (Muslim)	2.3
Turkey (Muslim)	1.5
Conservative Protestant percentile among Muslims	63rd percentile

WVS variables used: V185, V231(Republican), V202, V204, V208

* Arrived at by simply averaging the averages of each of the Muslim groups on each question. This skews Muslim opinion towards that of the Middle East and North Africa and away from South Asia, which, in terms of sheer numbers, is unrepresentative of the world's roughly 1.6 billion Muslims. Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh all have far more Muslims than any of the MENA countries do, but with the exception of Pakistan, when Americans think of Muslims, they primarily have Arabs and Persians in mind.

Changes in youths' patriotism by country over time

In addition to gauging how the shift in perceptions among American youth over the last few decades, Steve Sailer's post concerning an increase in nationalism among young Israelis prodded me to look at the WVS to see how the attitudes of young people in other countries have changed over time.

In both the second (1990-1991) and fifth (2005-2008) waves, participants were asked if they'd be willing to fight for their countries if war were to come to them. Drilling down, responses are available by age ranges that happen to correspond with the original article that Steve featured. The following table shows the percentages of respondents aged 15-29 who said they would be willing to go to war for their respective countries in 1990-1991 and in 2005-2008. The fourth column shows the changes in percentages of the youth cohort willing to fight over the intervening 15 years:

Country	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	56.5%	59.2%	+2.7
Brazil	40.4%	63.1%	+22.7
Bulgaria	93.5%	68.8%	(24.7)
Canada	68.7%	54.1%	(14.6)
Chile	84.5%	58.4%	(26.1)
China	97.3%	90.8%	(6.5)
Finland	80.9%	75.7%	(5.2)
France	59.3%	57.4%	(1.9)
Great Britain	75.0%	60.4%	(14.6)
India	93.5%	85.9%	(7.6)
Italy	29.7%	39.0%	+9.3
Japan	8.0%	11.6%	+3.6
Mexico	77.7%	75.9%	(1.8)
Netherlands	77.3%	53.1%	(24.2)
Norway	91.4%	88.0%	(3.4)
Poland	94.7%	82.8%	(11.9)
Romania	91.2%	64.6%	(26.6)
Russia	84.6%	85.9%	+1.3
South Africa	75.4%	69.5%	(5.9)
South Korea	86.9%	65.2%	(21.7)
Spain	52.8%	43.2%	(9.6)
Sweden	82.4%	72.9%	(9.5)
Switzerland	67.3%	44.3%	(23.0)
Turkey	91.1%	96.9%	+5.8
United States	82.5%	40.9%	(41.6)

The precipitous drop detected in the US here appears in stark contrast to what the GSS (which I put greater confidence in than I do the WVS) reveals. Conceivably, I guess it could be that while confidence and respect for the US military as an organization has increased, the desire to fight goatherds in the Hindu Kush does not inspire the same enthusiasm and dreams of valor being member to the leader of the free world in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse and the obliteration of Iraq in the Gulf War does.

In the rest of the West, the story has been a declining national fervor. While changes in demographic composition surely factor into shifts in public sentiment on a host of things, Muslims representation is marginal even in the fifth (2005-2008) wave. In France, it constituted 10.2% of the respondent pool. In Great Britain, 8.7%; in the Netherlands, 2.7%. And in France, Muslims' professed willingness to take up arms for France (67.5%) was indistinguishable from the country as a whole (66.5%). The same is true for Great Britain, with 67.5% of Muslims saying they'd go to war for the country compared to 65.8% of the entire British respondent pool. While the sentiment of these Muslims might be spurious, the fact remains that this suggests that the nationalism of these nations' native sons really has been falling.

The same pattern characterizes Eastern Europe, though this might be the result of the novelty of being newly Democratic as communism receded having worn off in places like Romania and Bulgaria.

While the West has been becoming less nationalistic, the young members of the putatively rising powers--Brazil, India, China, and Turkey--have been treading water or even showing increased jingoism. Israel wasn't included in the survey's earlier waves, but it looks to be diverging from Europe and North America in this regard.

WVS variables used: E012, V75 (age - respondent)

Let Melissa have them

As I was perusing WVS responses to questions about who constitutes an undesirable neighbor, the aversion to Gypsies among those in the five countries where the specific question was asked jumped out at me. Nearly 7 in 8 Italians said they wouldn't want to live near them. Nearly half of those in Spain and Slovenia feel the same way. Majorities of Moldovans and Romanians want nothing to do with the 'Romani', either.

Indeed, disdain for Gypsy neighbors is higher than it is for gays, immigrants, people of a different race, of a different religion, or who speak a different language, criminals, unmarried cohabitating couples, militant minorities, and political extremists. Only heavy drinkers and drug addicts are more shunned than Gypsies are (and in Italy, even these dregs are preferred over the Roma).

Being the parochial American that I am, the closest I ever come to the little filchers are the periodic stories from across the pond I read in curious amusement about governments, with popular consent, taking action against them. Gypsies are almost surreal to me. They're make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos. But apparently to know them is to hate them, or at least not want to have anything to do with them.

WVS variables used: V43MD

Changes in the importance of religion by country over time

In the comments to a previous post looking at changes in positions on social behaviors over time across several countries participating in the WVS, Ed Tom Kowalsky wrote:

I wonder if one could similarly track global views on immigration, religion, crime (in general) and the United States.

I thought we'd be 2 for 4, but it turns out the question on immigration policy wasn't asked in the survey's earlier years, so religion is the only additional variable the WVS provides insight into on this front. Ah well, .250 isn't terrible in baseball, so we won't complain about the survey's restrictions too much.

Parenthetically, one question related to perceptions of the United States was posed to Iraqis in the fifth wave (2005-2008) asking how much confidence they had in American troops. A staggering 88% responded with "none at all" (n = 2,577). That's what our blood, sweat, and tears got us. Awesome!

There are 26 countries that participated in the WVS during both the 1990-1991 and 2005-2008 periods, but Argentina is excluded because the question about the importance of religion in the respondent's life was not asked in the earlier take and Slovenia is excluded because the data for that country are apparently corrupt.

In the following table, a religious importance index is computed for the countries listed based on respondents' answers to the question asking how important religion is in their lives. There are four possible responses, ranging from "very important" to "not at all important". The former is assigned a multiplier of 3, the latter of 0, the "somewhat important" response of 2, and the "not too important" of 1. The percentages of respondents giving each answer are then multiplied correspondingly, and the total for each country is divided by 3 to create an index scale of 0-100, with 0 indicating that the entire population says religion is not at all important, and a 100 indicating that the entire population says it is very important.

Religious importance index scores are shown for both periods, and the column furthest to the right shows the change in score from the end of the Cold War to today:

Religious importance	90-91	05-08	Change
Brazil	78.8	79.6	0.8
Bulgaria	34.3	50.9	16.6
Canada	59.7	58.5	(1.2)
Chile	74.6	68.4	(6.2)
China	9.1	27.2	18.0
Finland	43.5	49.5	6.0
France	42.4	41.8	(0.6)
Great Britain	47.2	45.4	(1.8)
India	74.7	75.6	0.8
Italy	64.6	67.9	3.3
Japan	31.2	27.1	(4.1)
Mexico	66.3	80.2	13.9
Netherlands	45.7	34.6	(11.0)
Norway	44.7	39.1	(5.6)
Poland	79.2	77.3	(2.0)
Romania	69.9	82.1	12.2
Russia	37.2	47.9	10.8
South Africa	83.6	85.9	2.3
South Korea	55.8	49.9	(5.9)
Spain	49.7	41.4	(8.3)
Sweden	34.4	36.3	1.9
Switzerland	54.1	46.6	(7.5)
Turkey	70.1	87.8	17.8
United States	76.0	70.1	(5.9)

Without pretending to be an amateur historian, the shifts over time initially to appear to be pretty straightforward to me. In the former Soviet Union, people had lived for four decades in a society in which the elimination of religion was an official state goal and every good citizen claimed to be an atheist. Religious property was confiscated and the orthodox church was subjugated. It's not surprising that as the iron curtain was lifted and the masses were free to rediscover religion again, it made a comeback. The uptick in religious importance in China over the 15 year period presumably has a similar though less rigid explanation, as the mainland is now comparable to Japan in its self-described religiosity.

In the table above, Turkey's results also tracks well with that country's recent history. Ataturk's republic was to be a secular one, and through most of the last century, Turkey has consistently been described as the most modern, moderate Islamic country in the MENA. More recently though, Turkey has been becoming more accommodating towards pious Muslim sensibilities. Erdogan, prime minister since 2003, has overseen a shift away from secularism in the country. That's what Western media report anyway, and the WVS lends credence to it.

Hindus are holding the line. Good for them.

So are South Africans. Running a few more of those unbelieving Dutch devils out since apartheid ended couldn't have hurt the cause!

The US, along with Catholic Poland and to a lesser extent Italy, are still far more overtly religious than the rest of western Europe is, with Canada falling in between, but in the Occident and its offshoots, the story has been one of gentle and steady decline at roughly equal rates across countries.

Being a good American, I don't know much about the cultural happenings in distant Mexico, choosing instead to focus my attention on places that are of greater relevance to me like Israel and Afghanistan. Consequently, the fairly substantial increase in religious importance to my south isn't something I'm easily able to account for. I think the ruling National Action party is more socially conservative and religious than the other two major parties in Mexico are, and it's held the presidency since 2000, so maybe the two are related. Or perhaps the increasing violence and instability that has characterized the country over the last several years as its government fights with drug cartels has pushed people towards greater spirituality, as I think Agnostic would predict.

WVS variables used: V9, V146ZA

Shocker: Women's rights do not bloom in Arab Spring

A recent episode of NPR's Talk of the Nation focused on the consequences of the "Arab Spring" one year out. In response to a caller's question about how the overthrow of ruling regimes has affected women's rights, a correspondent in Egypt replies:

I think it's an extremely important question [AE: I wish reporters like this Garcia-Navarro would be asked why, exactly, is a question like this "extremely important"? Surely there are many other potential consequences of the 'Arab Spring' that are of greater importance to the West than this one is.], and I think, you know, it depends on which country you're looking at, but across the board I think many women who were involved in the revolution, certainly in Libya, certainly in Egypt, they do feel that they - that it hasn't necessarily empowered them.

For one, the "women who were involved in the revolution" don't appear to have much influence over what is replacing the regimes they helped topple:

The tally, with the two groups of Islamists together winning about 70 percent of the seats, indicates the deep cultural conservatism of the Egyptian public, which is expressing its will through free and fair elections for the first time in more than six decades. ...

A coalition of parties founded by the young leaders of the revolt that unseated Mr. Mubarak won only a few percent of the seats.

Upon news of the Egyptian parliamentary elections, Razib wrote:

Back in the heady days of the Arab Spring some commenters infected by revolutionary fervor would scoff at the purported Islamist sympathies of the people. What this goes to show is that enthusiasm and hope does not translate into reality. If secular liberals in Egypt bow before the principle of popularity, then they accept that it is right and proper that they present their throats to their new overlords. I don’t view this as an apocalypse. It is what it is. But it was predictable.

As are, I suspect, the prospects in Egypt and other Arab Spring countries for what in the Western worldview constitutes women's rights. The WVS probes respondents in participating countries about their feelings on multiple indicators of Western conceptions of women's rights. The following tables show responses from select Western nations and Muslim countries, and to provide a miscellaneous angle, Japan, collected from 2005-2008 (with the exception of the Egyptian response to the question on abortion, which was collected in 2000):

Agree that when jobs are scare, men should have more right to them than women	Men	Women
United States	8.0%	5.6%
Great Britain	18.2%	14.4%
Canada	14.1%	14.4%
Germany	19.5%	16.3%
France	16.2%	19.8%
Japan	28.7%	25.8%
Malaysia	59.4%	38.7%
Turkey	58.8%	47.7%
Iran	75.1%	63.6%
Iraq	87.4%	80.6%
Egypt	93.1%	84.9%

Men make better business executives than women do	Men	Women
United States	21.4%	11.7%
Great Britain	25.0%	9.5%
Canada	13.5%	9.4%
Germany	23.9%	10.2%
France	18.4%	10.5%
Japan	45.2%	29.0%
Malaysia	66.5%	42.6%
Turkey	59.5%	47.9%
Iran	85.6%	71.6%
Iraq	n/a	n/a
Egypt	89.2%	82.1%

Men make better political leaders than women do	Men	Women
United States	27.2%	22.3%
Great Britain	26.2%	13.9%
Canada	20.5%	16.4%
Germany	25.2%	12.9%
France	24.3%	18.3%
Japan	51.9%	37.7%
Malaysia	77.4%	59.2%
Turkey	66.5%	56.2%
Iran	85.3%	71.9%
Iraq	92.2%	88.1%
Egypt	94.7%	90.1%

Approve of single motherhood	Men	Women
United States	49.0%	55.1%
Great Britain	28.9%	37.7%
Canada	44.0%	48.7%
Germany	33.3%	38.3%
France	59.6%	64.8%
Japan	20.6%	22.3%
Malaysia	16.9%	18.0%
Turkey	9.0%	8.0%
Iran	3.0%	2.3%
Iraq	n/a	n/a
Egypt	1.5%	2.0%

University is more important for a boy than for a girl	Men	Women
United States	11.4%	4.5%
Great Britain	9.4%	4.5%
Canada	5.6%	4.3%
Germany	19.7%	10.2%
France	8.3%	5.3%
Japan	31.0%	18.8%
Malaysia	56.3%	36.1%
Turkey	22.3%	17.2%
Iran	64.2%	46.9%
Iraq	52.3%	46.0%
Egypt	46.7%	31.8%

Abortion is never justifiable	Men	Women
United States	24.4%	26.6%
Great Britain	20.2%	19.8%
Canada	25.0%	27.0%
Germany	15.0%	15.7%
France	12.8%	14.6%
Japan	15.2%	14.5%
Malaysia	40.7%	45.3%
Turkey	62.7%	61.6%
Iran	61.0%	61.6%
Iraq	83.6%	85.7%
Egypt	61.8%	50.9%

Turkey and Malaysia are considered religiously moderate Islamic countries, yet mainstream public sentiment on the items above (and on a whole host of other social issues) in these places are significantly to the right of the Republican party in the US, and of course public sentiment in more fervently Islamic countries like Iraq, Iran, and Egypt is more conservative still.

By way of example, the question on abortion is on a ten-point scale, with all but one of the possible responses allowing for abortion in at least some cases. The respective table above includes only the percentages of respondents who share Rick Santorum's view that it is never--even in the case of rape--justifiable for a woman to have an abortion. Throughout the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, majorities of both men and women feel the same way the "champion of the extreme anti-choice movement" in the US does.

The impression one gets from listening to major media organs in the US like NPR is that the putative rights of women are being squelched against their wishes. In reality, most women in Egypt don't want what the feminists in the West are selling. Four of five Egyptian women feel that men make better business executives than women do, and nine of ten feel the same way when it comes to political leaders. An overwhelming majority think that the workplace is a man's place before it is a woman's. Almost unanimously, single motherhood is censured. If a mainstream politician in the US were to express an opinion on any of these "women's rights" issues that most Egyptian women hold (and more power to them as far as I'm concerned--it's their country and their lives, not ours), it could easily spell the end of his political career.

WVS variables used: V44(1)(2-3), V59, V61, V62(1-2)(3-4), V63(1-2)(3-4), V204(1)(2-10), GENDER

Changes in positions on social behaviors over time, by country

Thinking about Razib's post at Discover magazine and then responding to Razib's subsequent comments on the same, Parapundit's Randall Parker wonders how stable social values are across countries:

It occurs to me that stability in how countries poll in world values surveys is an argument against the idea that the world is inevitably going to become liberal.

There are changes in wording in most of the survey questions by wave (that is, years in which surveys were conducted), but there is quite a bit of consistent overlap in a section over how justifiable certain "hot button" social behaviors are. The number of countries participating picks up enough in the 1990-1991 wave (before that, the pickings are pretty sparse) to make comparisons to the most recent 2005-2008 wave. This 1990-1991 wave corresponds fairly closely with the "end of history" predicted by Francis Fukuyama, when all countries were predicted to be moving inexorably towards liberal democracy.

The following tables show the mean responses of survey participants by country in the 90-91 wave, the 05-08 wave, and the shift in mean score over that decade and a half time period, by social issue. All questions ask respondents how often they feel the behavior in question is justifiable, with potential answers on a 10-point scale ranging from "never justifiable" (1) to "always justifiable" (10). So the higher the score, the more liberal a country's population is. If a country's values have liberalized (which, in the context of this post, refers to the freedom of the individual to choose to behave however he pleases) over time, the result is a positive number in the last column. Conversely, if the country has become less liberalized, the number will be negative.

There are data for 26 countries in both waves, though Slovenia is not included in any of the proceeding tables*. The WVS is mostly populated by affluent, first-world countries, especially in the earlier waves, so the only Islamic representative is Turkey:

Claiming government benefits	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	1.9	3.6	1.7
Brazil	2.7	2.7	0.0
Bulgaria	1.8	2.2	0.4
Canada	1.9	1.9	0.0
Chile	4.1	4.3	0.2
China	1.7	3.3	1.6
Finland	4.7	2.1	(2.6)
France	3.5	3.1	(0.4)
Great Britain	1.8	2.2	0.4
India	1.8	3.1	1.3
Italy	2.0	1.6	(0.4)
Japan	2.0	2.1	0.1
Mexico	4.9	4.1	(0.8)
Netherlands	1.6	1.5	(0.1)
Norway	1.4	2.1	0.7
Poland	2.1	2.3	0.2
Romania	1.7	2.0	0.3
Russia	2.1	2.8	0.7
South Africa	2.3	2.6	0.3
South Korea	2.2	2.8	0.6
Spain	2.8	2.5	(0.3)
Sweden	1.6	1.9	0.3
Switzerland	1.9	1.5	(0.4)
Turkey	1.5	1.6	0.1
United States	1.9	2.3	0.4

One standard deviation is 2.7 points, so the average Mexican resident is two-thirds of one SD further to the left (that is, at about the 72nd percentile of the US distribution) than the average American is. Yet another argument free market libertarians should employ when clamoring for open borders!

It's in the European welfare states like Finland and France--where liberalism has been normative for the longest--where the most backsliding has taken place. In most countries though, there has been a moderate shift towards liberalism.

Someone accepting a bribe	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	1.1	1.4	0.3
Brazil	1.4	1.9	0.5
Bulgaria	1.5	1.9	0.4
Canada	1.6	1.6	0.0
Chile	1.5	1.7	0.2
China	1.3	1.7	0.4
Finland	1.6	1.6	0.0
France	2.1	2.2	0.1
Great Britain	1.5	1.6	0.1
India	1.4	3.0	1.6
Italy	1.6	1.3	(0.3)
Japan	1.8	1.5	(0.3)
Mexico	2.8	2.4	(0.4)
Netherlands	1.8	1.5	(0.3)
Norway	1.5	1.5	0.0
Poland	1.6	1.4	(0.2)
Romania	2.1	1.4	(0.7)
Russia	1.4	1.8	0.4
South Africa	2.1	2.4	0.3
South Korea	1.8	1.6	(0.2)
Spain	1.5	1.8	0.3
Sweden	1.6	2.0	0.4
Switzerland	1.5	1.5	0.0
Turkey	1.2	1.3	0.1
United States	1.5	1.7	0.2

One SD is 1.6 points. Public positions on bribery have held fairly steady since the collapse of communism, although to the extent that they've moved at all, it's been in a liberal direction everywhere except some of Europe's more corrupt countries, our neighbor to the south, and surprisingly, the Netherlands.

Homosexuality	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	3.0	5.3	2.3
Brazil	2.4	4.2	1.8
Bulgaria	1.8	4.1	2.3
Canada	4.1	5.7	1.6
Chile	1.8	4.9	3.1
China	1.2	1.6	0.4
Finland	4.4	5.9	1.5
France	3.9	6.5	2.6
Great Britain	3.5	5.7	2.2
India	1.2	3.0	1.8
Italy	3.6	3.3	(0.3)
Japan	2.4	4.8	2.4
Mexico	2.9	4.5	1.6
Netherlands	7.2	7.2	0.0
Norway	4.1	7.7	3.6
Poland	1.8	3.1	1.3
Romania	1.5	2.1	0.6
Russia	1.4	2.5	1.1
South Africa	2.3	3.0	0.7
South Korea	1.6	2.8	1.2
Spain	3.4	6.7	3.3
Sweden	4.5	8.4	3.9
Switzerland	4.2	7.3	3.1
Turkey	1.6	1.7	0.1
United States	3.1	4.6	1.5

One SD is 3.5 points. It's not just in the US where the legalization of same-sex marriage appears to be an inevitability. There has been a veritable worldwide shifting in moral perceptions of homosexuality in less than one generation, with the only countries holding the line against a rain of fire and brimstone being the Catholic stronghold of Italy and Muslim Turkey (well, perceptions among the Dutch have remained constant, but are coming from a position that was already very tolerant towards homosexuality). Turkey, along with China, is far less tolerant of homosexuality than the rest of the countries represented are.

Prostitution	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	2.1	4.1	2.0
Brazil	2.0	3.1	1.1
Bulgaria	2.2	3.0	0.8
Canada	3.4	3.3	(0.1)
Chile	1.8	3.5	1.7
China	1.2	1.4	0.2
Finland	4.3	3.1	(1.2)
France	3.2	3.4	0.2
Great Britain	3.1	3.9	0.8
India	1.5	3.1	1.6
Italy	2.5	2.4	(0.1)
Japan	1.9	2.0	0.1
Mexico	3.2	3.9	0.7
Netherlands	5.5	5.6	0.1
Norway	2.1	4.1	2.0
Poland	1.6	2.5	0.9
Romania	1.9	2.1	0.2
Russia	1.8	2.3	0.5
South Africa	2.1	2.5	0.4
South Korea	2.2	2.5	0.3
Spain	2.8	4.6	1.8
Sweden	2.1	3.1	1.0
Switzerland	3.7	5.1	1.4
Turkey	1.7	1.8	0.1
United States	2.4	3.2	0.8

One SD is 2.8 points. The world's oldest profession is seeing many of its modern objectors falling away, as positions on prostitution have become more liberalized in nearly every country surveyed, with Finland the one glaring exception. Again we see that positions in China and Turkey have moved very little over the time period.

Abortion	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	3.4	3.2	(0.2)
Brazil	2.5	2.4	(0.1)
Bulgaria	5.1	5.6	0.5
Canada	4.9	4.7	(0.2)
Chile	1.8	2.6	0.8
China	4.9	2.1	(2.8)
Finland	6.5	5.5	(1.0)
France	5.0	6.5	1.5
Great Britain	4.5	4.9	0.4
India	3.4	3.3	(0.1)
Italy	4.3	3.5	(0.8)
Japan	3.7	4.6	0.9
Mexico	3.8	3.2	(0.6)
Netherlands	5.2	5.5	0.3
Norway	5.0	6.7	1.7
Poland	3.2	3.0	(0.2)
Romania	4.9	3.3	(1.6)
Russia	4.5	4.1	(0.4)
South Africa	2.8	2.6	(0.2)
South Korea	4.2	3.5	(0.7)
Spain	4.1	5.5	1.4
Sweden	5.4	7.8	2.4
Switzerland	3.2	5.5	2.3
Turkey	4.2	2.3	(1.9)
United States	4.0	4.5	0.5

One SD is 3.1 points. As liberalism traipses across the globe, it gets tripped up on the issue of abortion. While many social conservatives in the US despair of what they perceive to be an abandonment of values at home, the moral trajectory of abortion is far less clear than it is of homosexuality.

China, where penalties can still result when an abortion is not undergone by Han who violate the one-child policy, has seen a significant shift towards a more pro-life position as the aberration that is the country's procreation-limiting policy has presumably become more widely understood by the Chinese populous.

Turkey, which has yet to show any liberalizing in sentiment, continues not to show any here.

It's tempting to think that birth dearths in countries where public sentiment has moved away from abortion rights like Russia, Romania, South Korea, and Italy is a result of said decline in fecundity, but there are other nations like Norway, France, and Spain that are well below replacement level fertility yet have nonetheless become more inclined towards abortion over the same period of time.

Divorce	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	5.8	6.5	0.7
Brazil	4.9	5.6	0.7
Bulgaria	4.5	6.4	1.9
Canada	5.6	6.0	0.4
Chile	3.5	6.0	2.5
China	4.8	2.7	(2.1)
Finland	7.2	6.8	(0.4)
France	5.6	6.9	1.3
Great Britain	5.3	6.4	1.1
India	2.7	3.9	1.2
Italy	5.2	5.0	(0.2)
Japan	4.9	6.4	1.5
Mexico	4.8	5.3	0.5
Netherlands	6.1	6.4	0.3
Norway	5.3	7.2	1.9
Poland	4.2	4.7	0.5
Romania	5.0	4.2	(0.8)
Russia	4.8	5.4	0.6
South Africa	3.5	3.9	0.4
South Korea	4.3	4.6	0.3
Spain	5.3	7.1	1.8
Sweden	6.3	8.4	2.1
Switzerland	4.8	6.9	2.1
Turkey	5.0	3.4	(1.6)
United States	4.9	5.8	0.9

One SD is 3.1 points. Most countries have been moving in a liberal direction with two notable--and now familiar--exceptions; Turkey and China. Of course, with one-sixth of the world's population, when China moves one direction, even if the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction, it's tough to sell the change as inexorable on the world stage. What about India and Brazil, two other non-Western and non-East Asian countries with large populations? On abortion, they both have treaded water. On all the other social issues considered thus far, they've shifted in a liberal direction (as have Argentina and Chile, the other two Latin American countries represented in the WVS).

Euthanasia	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	3.2	4.0	0.8
Brazil	2.7	3.5	0.8
Bulgaria	3.5	5.6	2.1
Canada	5.0	5.3	0.3
Chile	2.7	3.7	1.0
China	6.7	3.3	(3.4)
Finland	6.2	5.8	(0.4)
France	5.2	6.8	1.6
Great Britain	4.7	6.1	1.4
India	3.3	3.9	0.6
Italy	3.6	3.9	0.3
Japan	5.3	6.5	1.2
Mexico	4.2	4.3	0.1
Netherlands	5.9	6.3	0.4
Norway	4.2	5.6	1.4
Poland	2.1	3.4	1.3
Romania	3.5	3.0	(0.5)
Russia	3.6	5.3	1.7
South Africa	3.3	3.2	(0.1)
South Korea	n/a	n/a	n/a
Spain	3.9	5.6	1.7
Sweden	5.0	6.7	1.7
Switzerland	5.2	6.6	1.4
Turkey	3.0	2.8	(0.2)
United States	4.2	4.9	0.7

One SD is 3.3 points. On what social conservatives deem "sanctity of life" issues in the US, China has markedly shifted away from a liberal position. Turkey again shows no evidence of liberalization. South Africa, the only sub-Saharan African country represented, has, excepting abortion, become more liberal on all the issues considered thus far. When it comes to euthanasia, however, South Africans, along with the Turks, have not undergone any change in public sentiment.

Suicide	90-91	05-08	Change
Argentina	1.7	2.3	0.6
Brazil	1.4	1.8	0.4
Bulgaria	2.3	2.5	0.2
Canada	2.9	2.8	(0.1)
Chile	1.7	2.3	0.6
China	2.6	1.8	(0.8)
Finland	3.8	3.3	(0.5)
France	3.8	3.8	0.0
Great Britain	3.2	3.8	0.6
India	1.6	3.4	1.8
Italy	2.1	2.1	0.0
Japan	2.7	2.9	0.2
Mexico	3.2	2.6	(0.6)
Netherlands	4.4	3.8	(0.6)
Norway	2.6	3.4	0.8
Poland	2.2	2.3	0.1
Romania	1.9	1.5	(0.4)
Russia	2.2	2.2	0.0
South Africa	2.1	2.4	0.3
South Korea	2.9	2.9	0.0
Spain	2.2	3.1	0.9
Sweden	3.4	4.4	1.0
Switzerland	3.0	4.6	1.6
Turkey	1.7	1.5	(0.2)
United States	2.2	2.8	0.6

One standard deviation is 2.9 points. There hasn't been an enormous amount of change in perceptions of suicide anywhere in the last 15 years, although the ratchet is turning towards liberalism in most countries, with China and Turkey again being notable exceptions.

Most of the data comes from the Westernized world, and there's little to dispute that in the West, the move towards liberalism has been a steady one since the lifting of the iron curtain, in the former Soviet Union as well as free Europe and the US. Only on abortion has Russian opinion moved away from liberalism. In Latin America, India, and to a lesser extent, South Africa, it has been the same story--excepting abortion, all have become more liberal.

China and Turkey, however, have conspicuously not. Turkey is more liberal (or in media parlance, more "moderate") than North Africa, which is in turn more liberal than Egypt and most of the Middle East. I'm certainly not qualified to say whether or not Turkey proxies well for the rest of the Muslim world in terms of liberalization of social mores, and Turkey has notoriously crept away from secularism over the last couple of decades, but it at least suggests that Randall's suspicion that the move towards liberalism is evitable may be accurate. And this century is going to be a Sinitic story much more than the last one was. If the Muslim world, where fertility is still high, and China, where wealth and worldwide influence are on the rise, are not liberalizing, liberalism's future is not too bright.

Parenthetically, this is hardly a novel concept. Pat Buchanan dealt with it in his invaluable The Death of the West, and Steve Sailer added to it in his review of Buchanan's book.

WVS variables used: V201, V202, V203, V204, V205, V206, V207

* There were obviously some errors in coding the Slovenian responses for the 05-08 wave, as I first became aware of a couple of years ago. The data corruption extends beyond the one item I initially noticed it on, as the responses for all of the justification questions are extreme outliers, with virtually every behavior being almost always justifiable if the WVS data are to be trusted (which I'm confident in saying should not be done).

Mexican fatalism

I don't tap into the World Values Survey nearly as often as I'd ideally like to because it's more difficult to trust than the GSS is. Sometimes the problems are apparently just coding errors, but often the issues involve representative sampling (or the lack thereof), confusion in translation, or something else. Exacerbating this challenge, it's tougher for me to use my intuition as a first approximation of whether or not the results are flawed when the comparisons are between Slovenia and Andorra than when they're between Kansas and New York because I'm merely a citizen of the US, not of the world.

That said, Steve Sailer recently recounted the following childhood experience from Mexico:

Having traveled a modest amount in Mexico with my father when I was young, it seemed like a not badly behaved place. Mexico under the PRI was a police state, although only a small fraction of the large number of policemen were efficient and formidable. The populace was fairly cowed and meek, at least when sober. Bad driving and accidents were a major problem (presumably originating in Mexican fatalism), and petty graft was an annoyance, but outright crime wasn't a major problem for tourists.

People enjoying relatively high socio-economic status tend to be less fatalistic than people on lower rungs of the ladder do, and I suspect this pattern would manifest itself at the national level, but being the parochial guy that I am, I wasn't aware of Mexicans being particularly fatalistic.

The WVS (fourth wave) offers some potential insight into the question. The following table ranks the participating countries by how much control over their lives respondents in those countries feel they have. The higher the self-determination score, the less fatalistic the country is:

Countries	SD
1. Mexico	8.4
2. Colombia	8.0
3. Argentina, New Zealand, Trinidad/Tobago	7.9
4. Sweden, Uruguay	7.8
5. Norway, Brazil, Andorra	7.7
6. United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Switzerland, Romania, Jordan	7.6
7. Finland, Slovenia, Cyprus, Guatemala	7.5
8. Turkey, Indonesia	7.4
9. Great Britain, Taiwan, Malaysia	7.3
10. Chile, China, Zambia	7.2
11. Peru, Ghana, Vietnam, Iran	7.1
12. Russia	7.0
13. Spain, Moldova, Thailand	6.9
14. Germany	6.8
15. France, the Netherlands, South Korea	6.7
16. Poland	6.6
17. Serbia, Rwanda	6.5
18. Georgia	6.4
19. Italy, Hong Kong	6.3
20. Ethiopia	6.2
21. Japan, Egypt, Mali	6.1
22. India, Ukraine	6.0
23. Bulgaria	5.8
24. Burkina Faso	5.7
25. Iraq	5.4
26. Morocco	5.3

With Egypt, Mali, Iraq, and Morocco at the bottom of the list, at first blush it appears that Muslim countries are more fatalistic than non-Muslim countries are, in accordance with the thesis put forth by the late Samuel Huntington. However, Turkey, Jordan, and Indonesia are among countries where the greatest levels of self-determination are perceived, in conflict with that observation.

The Anglophone nations are all bunched pretty close to one another, with the three largest British offshoots having the same self-determination scores. Along with Scandanavia, these countries are less fatalistic than eastern and southern European countries are.

One standard deviation is 2.3 self-determination points, so the gap between Morocco and Mexico is almost 1.5 standard deviations wide, suggesting that the average Moroccan is more fatalistic than over 90% of Mexicans are. That revelation stuns me, and I have no idea how accurately it reflects reality (see the opening paragraph!). Given that Steve has the opposite impression of Mexico, I'll withhold judgment. There does appear to be some geographical consistency with regards to Mexico, though--the other Latin American countries represented cluster near the top of the list as well. Peru is the most fatalistic country to our south, and it's in the middle of the pack.

Let's look a little closer to home. The GSS queried respondents on something similar in 2008, asking them to state whether or not they agreed with the statement that "there is little that people can do to change the course of their lives". Again, the higher the score, the less fatalistic and more self-determinative the group is (n = 1,356):

Race	SD
Whites	4.14
Asians	4.04
Blacks	3.74
Hispanics	3.38

One standard deviation is 1.01 points, so the difference between whites and Hispanics is substantial, with Hispanics being considerably more fatalistic than other Americans are. Perhaps self-determination is one of the few things that does stop at the Rio Grande. Or maybe Steve is correct and the WVS is once again shown not to be very useful. In Sailer and GSS v. the WVS, my money is on the plaintiffs!

WVS variables used: V46 (excluding DK/NA)

GSS variables used: RACECEN1(1)(2)(4-10)(15-16), FATALISM