Ranking Societal Capital: USA Is #4, but the Long-Run Outlook Isn’t Encouraging by Dan Mitchell

 I’m a voracious consumer of publications that rank economic liberty and national competitiveness. Simply stated, these apples-to-apples rankings tell us which countries have policies that are friendly to growth (and thus the places that will enjoy rising living standards).

I’m also very interested in “societal capital,” which is the degree to which the people of a nation believe in values such as self reliance, work, individual initiative, and personal responsibility.

In some sense, societal capital may be more important for a nation’s long-run prosperity than how it scores in any particular index.

That’s because it’s probably just a matter of time before a country with low levels of societal capital winds up adopting bad policy.

That being said, other than occasional examples of cross-country polling data, I’ve never seen a good way of ranking nations based on societal capital.

But that’s now changed, thanks to a new report called the Global Index of Economic Mentality.

In an article for National Review, Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University summarizes the key findings.

GIEM scores measure the public’s embrace of the idea of economic freedom. A high GIEM score indicates that citizens in a particular country support the idea that their government should not play a major role in directing or regulating economic activity or in redistributing income. Citizens of high-scoring countries typically back an institutional framework that prioritizes private initiative, free competition, and personal responsibility — in short, a system of free enterprise. …The GIEM study found that countries that embrace a free-market mentality have more efficient economic institutions and higher per capita GDP than those who support socialist, interventionist mentalities.

New Zealand is in first place and United States is in fourth place.

New Zealand comes out on top with the highest score on the inaugural Global Index of Economic Mentality, followed by the Czech Republic, Sweden, the United States, and Denmark. This year’s lowest scorer is Bosnia, preceded by Bangladesh, Myanmar, Montenegro, and Azerbaijan.

There’s some very bad news for Chile, which may explain why people in that nation just voted to potentially replace the constitution which has delivered unimaginable prosperity.

Rather surprisingly, Chile is the lowest GIEM scorer in Latin America, even a notch below Argentina, and 64th overall. These data suggest that while the Chicago Boys…accomplished innumerable free-market reforms — reforms that have led to a great improvement in prosperity and the second-highest GDP per capita of any country in South America — they have failed to convince the Chilean public of the benefits of the free-market system that has lifted them out of poverty.

And there’s bad news for the United States because young people have very worrisome views.

If we look at country-by-country demographics, there is not much difference between the economic mentality of those over 40 years old and under 40 years old for most countries. But there are notable exceptions. The countries with the most significant difference in economic mentality between the two age groups are the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. In these countries, the younger generations possess a significantly weaker attachment to free-market ideas than do older generations, with the U.S. as the most extreme case. It makes one wonder what brand of economics is being peddled in high schools and universities in the United States.

For what it’s worth, if only young people were counted, America would rank #14 rather than #4. Not horrible, but definitely a shift in the wrong direction.

Let’s close by looking at some data from a PowerPoint presentation about this new index.

First we have the methodology.

Second, here are the scores for the 74 nations.

Last but not least, here’s the U.S. score compared to the average score in other regions.

As you can see, Americans have very good attitudes about preferring markets and disliking redistribution, but we score quite poorly on the issue of personal responsibility.

P.S. I’m not surprised to see good scores for the Nordic nations, and it’s also good to see high scores for Georgia and Estonia, though I’m somewhat shocked that Switzerland is in the middle of the pack. But I’m not surprised to see poor scores for China and Italy.