A global tolerance index

Abstract

Purpose -The aim of this paper is to create a country-level measure of tolerance and to test the relationships between this measure of country-level tolerance and percentage of talented workers, economic development, and competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach -A country-level measure of tolerance for 62 countries is created using responses from the World Values Survey. In particular, four survey responses which closely mirror the traditional definitions of tolerance are considered in the creation of the index. To test the relationships between country-level tolerance and percentage of talented workers, economic development, and competitiveness, a series of hypotheses tests are conducted using the Spearman and Pearson correlation coefficients. Findings -The results suggest that more tolerant countries tend to attract more net migrants, have a greater concentration of talented workers, higher levels of economic development, and are more competitive.Research limitations/implications -While, the results of this analysis suggest that tolerance is an important factor for economic prosperity, it should be noted that tolerance alone cannot foster development. Many other factors have a significant effect on economic prosperity and while tolerance is found to be a significant factor, a more tolerant environment alone will not create economic gains. Practical implications -Global companies needing to attract talented workers should develop policies and work environments which encourage acceptance and tolerance for differences. Originality/value -This paper provides a measure of country-level tolerance for 62 countries and establishes the value of tolerance in regard to economic prosperity. This study has value to researchers studying tolerance at the country-level and to managers of global companies.

Global Social Tolerance Index and multi-method country rankings sensitivity

“…The present study advances earlier work that compared countries in terms of social tolerance (e.g., Das, DiRienzo, & Tiemann, 2008) in several important ways. First, recognizing that tolerance is a multidimensional construct, we develop a multi-factor social tolerance index that allows for a more fine grained analysis of the various aspects of social tolerance.…”

“…For example, Das et al (2008) offered a national-level tolerance index using average responses to four 1999-2004 WVS questions regarding minorities and homosexuals. While providing a foundation for our work, their study is limited in the number of items used, the consideration of only one overall tolerance dimension, and its ranking development method, in particular weighting all items equally.…”

“…While a general empirical link has been demonstrated between social tolerance and certain economic growth measures (Das et al, 2008;Treisman, 2000), a comprehensive social tolerance index may assist academics, regulators, government officials, and analysts in better identifying global economic determinants and consequences of this important construct. For example, a better understanding of tolerance may help government officials to develop better policies to address issues such as the integration of immigrants into the local economy.…”

“…Third, we present alternative measures of ranking sensitivity or robustness. Fourth, we validate our overall index and each of our dimensional indexes against a set of criteria and explore the role of social tolerance in a larger nomological network -demonstrating that our composite index correlates reasonably higher with our external validation measures than the Das et al (2008) index. For calculating all indexes in this study we consider only non-participatory unsupervised methods that require no inputs from expert opinions or from specialized external software, helping to reduce researcher bias in the index development process.…”

Globalization and the Transmission of Social Values: The Case of Tolerance

“…And if they think that their own preferences are desirable for the new generation, they may consequently, in an "imperialistic" fashion, consider it important for their offspring to be tolerant as well. Second, globalization implies that children likely become more successful in life if they interact freely with others irrespective of characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual 4 See, e.g., Florida (2002), Ottaviani and Peri (2006), McGranahan and Wojan (2007), Das et al (2008), Florida et al (2008 and Berggren and Elinder (2012). Cf.…”