March 18, 2005

Resistance to Multiculturalism is not related to economic prosperity

A reader suggested that xenophobia could be related to economic prosperity, with more prosperous societies being more "tolerant".

To test this hypothesis, I regressed GDP per capita income (from the CIA World Factbook) with "Resistance to Multicultural Society" taken from the recent report on European attitudes. I dropped tiny super-high income Luxembourg, averaged the two German regions, and used Great Britain as representative for the United Kingdom.

The result? A slightly negative, statistically not significant correlation of -0.12.

No comments: