A New Gay Index May 17, 2010
Posted by David in The Social Sciences.Tags: creative cities, Gay Index, Knowledge society, Richard Florida, Tolerance
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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?)
The Social Importance of Tolerance May 16, 2009
Posted by David in Economics, Politics, The Social Sciences.Tags: Gay Index, Inglehart, Postmaterialism, Richard Florida, Tolerance Index, World Values Survey
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Inglehart likes to argue that postmaterialist values are strongly associated with democracy (see my preceding blog entry). Inglehart further contends that postmaterialists – according to his four-item, eight-item, or twelve-item indices – will be increasing as a proportion of the population as long as there is sustained economic growth and peaceful external relations. This should reflect a stable cohort effect where values are established during childhood socialization processes.
While I agree with the thrust of Inglehart’s arguments and hypotheses, I think that the latest wave of the world values survey demonstrates that other measures are better at identifying cohort effects than any index of postmaterialism. For example, the percentage of American WVS respondents who identified strong defense forces as their top priority – one of the key materialism indicators – was 15.5% in 1990, 14.3% in 1995, 16.0% in 1999, but 29.0% in 2006. Meanwhile, “protecting freedom of speech” – a key postmaterialism indicator – was 22.6% in 1990, 21.2% in 1995, 25.4% in 1999, but then went down to 17.8% in 2006. This is not what we would expect from a stable cohort effect — instead I suspect that the perceived insecurity of adulthood rather than childhood explains the greater proportion of materialists in the United States in 2006 than during the 1990s.
However, Inglehart’s charts indicate that intolerance is as strongly associated with modernism as postmaterialism is with postmodernism. But tolerance seems less susceptible to external shocks such as terrorist attacks or preparations for war. For example, the percentage of Americans that would not like neighbors of another race than their own was 8.7% in 1990, 6.6% in 1995, 8.0% in 1999 and 4.1% in 2006. A similar downward trend is for the most part evident for the percentage wishing to avoid gay neighbors: 38.6% in 1990, 29.5% in 1995, 23.3% in 1999 and 26.0% in 2006. And I think the greater stability of the tolerance measures makes a lot of intuitive sense: why would an economic recession or a war make me less willing to have gay neighbors, assuming that I grew up in a non-homophobic environment? On the other hand, it is plausible that a recession would focus my attention on the prospects for economic growth and that a war would make me worry about the nation’s defense capabilities (admittedly the second scenario is not plausible in my case; I have always been an admirer of the defense policies of Costa Rica, the Norwegian territory of Svalbard and the autonomous Finnish island of Åland).
To back up my hypothesis, I have spent the last week estimating associations between tolerance and various measures of institutional performance that I believe are relevant for anyone with broadly democratic values: freedom of the press (Freedom House), political rights and civil liberties (Freedom House), corruption (Transparency International) and the Democracy Index of the Economist magazine. I also looked at a performance measure that appeals beyond committed liberals or democrats: the Human Development Index of the United Nations, which reflects per capita GDP, life expectancy, and literacy; to complete the picture I then looked at a favored measure among classical liberals: the Economic Freedom Index of the Fraser Institute. Finally, I combined all these indices into an aggregate index that should reflect combined performance in terms of civil liberties, democracy, rule of law, economic freedom, and material standard of living (I call it the Socio-economic Development Index, or SDI).
There is a very predictable pattern that is revealed when perusing all these indices: the best-performing ten countries are almost always the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, closely followed by countries such as the US, the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain. The exception is the economic freedom index, where the top 10 consist of English-speaking countries, Switzerland, and two well-known Asian city states, closely followed by the Nordic countries with the notable exception of Sweden.
Anyway, the correlations between a special Tolerance Index (acceptance of other-race, immigrant, and gay neighbors and general acceptance of homosexuality, divorce, and prostitution) and the various performance measures turned out as follows, including all 83 countries that took part in the WVS at least once between 1995 and 2008 with the relevant questions included:
Socio-economic Development Index: .807
The Economist’s Democracy Index: .791
Corruption Perceptions Index: .727
Freedom of the Press Index: .704
Political Rights and Civil Liberties Index: .704
Human Development Index: .667
Economic Freedom Index: .564
Partial correlation analysis revealed that the effect of the Tolerance Index remained highly statistically significant after controlling for Inglehart’s Postmaterialist Liberty Aspirations Index (e.g. .596 as the partial Tolerance Index -SDI correlation), while the reverse was not true (only .165 between Inglehart’s index and the SDI when controlling for the Tolerance Index, which is insignificant at the one-tailed .05 level). The Tolerance Index also remains significant after controlling for per capita GDP (e.g. .486 between the Tolerance Index and the Democracy Index when controlling for per capita GDP in purchasing power parity dollars).
Another interesting result is that the two measures of tolerance toward gays were almost as strongly correlated with the various freedom and democracy measures as the Tolerance Index itself. For example, the simple correlation between acceptance of gay neighbors and the aggregate SDI index is .762, which is a remarkably close association.
Inglehart emphasizes that the evolution of values, economies, and political systems are interdependent, and that consequently there is neither a Weberian priority given to values as ultimate deteminants, nor a Marxian priority of economic relationships. I agree. But what I think this simple analysis shows is that tolerance is closely associated with freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and economic well-being. This is not a new insight, but I think that the relationship is much stronger than most people (including me) would have dared hope for.
I have to admit that I am not a value-neutral analyst in this case. I actually think that tolerance is the greatest of the social virtues. And it’s great to have a good evidential argument against social conservatives: whether your priority is freedom of speech, democracy, free markets, the rule of law, or economic development it follows that social tolerance is your friend, not your enemy. And the tolerance that matters most is sexual tolerance, closely followed by multicultural and racial tolerance. In other words, intolerant goals can probably only be attained at the cost of living in a less free, less democratic, more corrupt, more regulated, and less prosperous society.
This conclusion actually echoes Richard Florida’s arguments, whose main point has been that economically dynamic and culturally creative regions require tolerant values, as well as talented individuals and high technology. Florida is of course also famous for his “gay index,” which measures regional concentrations of gay residents rather than national attitutes toward gays or homosexuality. While I was originally a little skeptical (I thought that the notion of a “gay index” is more likely to be noticed than other indices, and is therefore an attractive self-promotion strategy), I now think that Florida is really onto something with his “3T” message. And this is all to the best.
Meanwhile, these indices and results can be used to offer location advice in a globalized world:
For tolerant free-market types: Switzerland
For tolerant welfare-state types: Sweden
For intolerant free-market types: Singapore
For intolerant welfare-state types: France (ok, intolerant by OECD standards only, not by global standards)
For homophobes: Jordan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh should all be ideal, although Iran is a close runner-up.
For tolerant people who don’t like snow: Spain
In case you are wondering, the top ten countries according to the tolerance index are Andorra, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Iceland, Denmark, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand. The bottom ten (of 83 surveyed nations) are – beginning at the bottom of the list – Bangladesh, Jordan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Georgia, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Morocco.
