A New Gay Index

Richard Florida stresses the importance of tolerance in post-industrial creative cities, since tolerance encourages creativity and imagination. He has become associated with a “Gay Index,” which measures the gay proportion of the general population in different metropolitan regions. He argues that gay people are attracted by tolerant environments, and thus they tend to flock to the most tolerant cities. And it’s exactly a tolerant environment that is needed for creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Consequently, he argues that his Gay Index is a good predictor of regional economic performance in the post-industrial economy.

This assertion is not without its critics. It goes without saying that people associated with the US Religious Right are unimpressed. But there have also been more scholarly critics, such as Ed Glaeser of Harvard, who claims that the only thing that matters is human capital as conventionally measured, as has always been the case.

In my new book (English translation of title: “The Future of the Oresund Region: The Values of a Young Generation”), I set about investigating tolerance as a value (not as an assumption with observable revealed-preference outcomes, which is Florida’s approach). First I did a macroanalysis at the national level, comparing six different types of tolerance by looking at simple correlations with different measures of economic development, particularly the Human Development Index, the Corruption Perceptions Index, the Press Freedom Index, and an index of scientific publications per capita.

The analysis revealed correlations in the +0.5 to +0.8 range for all studied tolerance measures, using results from the World Values Survey. The tolerance measures were the following: justification of homosexuality, divorce or prostitution, and acceptance of gay, immigrant or other-race neighbors. I also included Inglehart’s postmaterialism index (correlations between 0.5 and 0.6). There was an important conclusion: the single best predictor of development, whether measured as HDI (income/health/education), absence of corruption, freedom of expression or science production is the degree of justification of homosexuality, closely followed by acceptance of gay neighbors! This was followed in turn by justification of divorce, postmaterialism, justification of prostitution, acceptance of other-race neighbors, and acceptance of immigrant neighbors. Moreover, partial correlation measures also supported tolerance toward gays as the most important variables.

I then proceeded to analyze tolerance among young people in the Oresund region. Generally speaking, most young people can accept gay neighbors (between 85 and 90 percent). But it was still the single best predictor of a host of variables associated with the post-industrial society. Not unexpectedly, tolerance toward gays is most strongly associated with women in college-track educational programs. More interesting is the fact that tolerance toward gay neighbors has a strong positive association with the attractiveness of knowledge-oriented occupations (e.g. scientist, engineer, physician) and an even stronger positive association with the attractiveness of “artist/entertainer.” It has a strong negative association with manual occupations (construction worker, car mechanic etc.).  In addition, tolerant students are over-represented among those who list “interesting work” and “music/art” as among their four top life priorities. Tolerance toward gays is also positively associated with geographical mobility and with other kinds of tolerance.

A geographical analysis revealed that the overwhelming majority of young people in Zealand (Denmark) and of young women in Scania (Sweden) can be described as tolerant. But there is a sizable intolerant minority among young Scanian men. Intolerance is especially over-represented among men in vocational schools. Landskrona, Helsingborg, Angelholm and other municipalities in the north-western part of Scania are especially well-endowed with intolerant young men. In some of these places, as many as a third of the population of 19-year-old men do not only reject gay neighbors, but also Jewish, other-race, or different-language neighbors. Even greater shares reject Muslim, immigrant or Romani neighbors.

Analyzing the statistical association between general intolerance and one’s favored society (among male students) produced a remarkably clear result. Among those who accept all kinds of neighbors, 80 percent did not think that “industrial society” is the most attractive type of society. They favored the given alternatives, which were “the knowledge society” and “ecological society.” Among students who disliked at least 5 of 10 mentioned “out-groups,” the corresponding result was that 60 percent prefer an industrial society, which was described as a society where manufacturing is the most important economic activity.

I think values regarding homosexuality is a very useful complement to Florida’s gay index. Florida claims that gays are over-represented in places with “talent and technology.” I claim that the relative justification of homosexuality and acceptance of gay neighbors are the two best indicators of national standard of living, absence of corruption, freedom of expression, and scientific output.  And acceptance of gay neighbors (the justification question was not included in the questionnaire) is the single best predictor of the attractiveness of knowledge-based and creative occupations, the willingness to move to another city, and the importance attached to work content (relative to salary). It is also a very good predictor of other types of tolerance and postmaterialism, but these latter measures are not as good at predicting non-tolerance variables.

We can also say something about the geography of the future on the basis both of Florida’s Gay Index and my New Gay Index. According to Florida, the future belongs to cities like San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, and Boston. On the basis of nation-level data, it seems as if the future belongs to Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and three English-speaking countries: Canada, Australia, and the UK. And on the basis of my microlevel data it seems to belong to college-educated women in creative occupations in large cities and college towns. The people of the past are working-class men in areas with high unemployment (but that’s not really a surprise, is it?)