28 September 2008

Common Values - Why Kiwis and Canucks get along so well?

The World Values Survey web site has an interesting Cultural Map of the World (see below) by Political Studies Professors Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel that organises countries by the values their people hold.


This seems to provide a partial explanation as to why I, as a New Zealander, feel more at home in Canada than England or even Australia and enjoy visiting Switzerland and Austria.

What would be fascinating to see is such a map done for the values held by people in individual states in the USA, particularly California and New York compared with the Mid West and Deep South.

I have seen a similar map graphing the relationship between trust and economic performance by Harrison and Huntington (2000) in "The Origin of Wealth" by Eric Beinhocker (Figure 18-1 on page 433 - also see previous post).

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