Modernization, values and happiness: Russia and the world

Eduard Ponarin's report at  a meeting of IABS/Russia Sociological club

Eduard Ponarin, PhD, the director of LCSR, gave a talk on “Modernization, values and happiness: Russia and the world” at the regular meeting of IABS/Russia Sociological club on November 26, 2012.

During the report Eduard Ponarin highlighted a theory of modernization developed by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel. According to this theory, economic growth increases economic and physical security which in turn leads to realizing of importance of freedom and democratic institutions by individuals. Throughout the most part of the history people had to provide themselves with food and there was almost no social inequality. A growing gap between elites and masses and consequently decline in freedom emerged in the agrarian societies. Industrialization and rising existential security contributed to the shift from traditional to secular-rational values. Fulfilling the basic needs leads to more open and tolerant societies, to the increasing level of trust and to the development of democratic institutions.

According to the WVS data, the degree of adherence to secular-rational and self-expression values is associated with the GDP growth and varies depending on cultural zone. Protestant European countries are the most modernized whereas the countries in Africa and South Asia are the least modernized. In the post-soviet states survival values are prevalent although secular-rational values are also present to some extent. Latin America is characterized by traditional and self-expression values.

Subjective well-being increases with the growth of GDP per capita. There is the same association between these two indicators as in the case of value change. At the first stage an increase of material well-being leads to the rapid growth of subjective well-being, whereas after the basic needs are fulfilled the further GDP growth leads to the moderate growth of subjective well-being. The existential security results in increasing freedom of choice which becomes of such importance for people as money and welfare. Increasing choice of freedom also contributes to happiness. In post-soviet countries subjective well-being is lower than it could be predicted by GDP per capita. On the contrary, in Latin America subjective well-being is relatively high.

World Value Survey allows us to explore dynamics of value change in a number of countries from 1981 to 2011. The majority of countries are moving towards secular-rational and self-expression values. However there are some exceptions among which the most remarkable is Russia. Russia experienced a huge shift towards traditional values and some shift to survival values. Post-communist Europe, Latin America and Africa also experienced a transition to traditional values.

In Russia subjective well-being is closely connected with the GDP per capita. From 1991 to 2011 the decreasing share of happy people is ahead of decrease of GDP per capita. Furthermore, in Russia there are enormous cohort differences in the subjective well-being. The collapse of the Soviet Union made oldest cohorts of Russians “unhappy forever”. At the same time subjective well-being of the youngest cohorts is increasing along with economic growth.

After the presentation the participants discussed some methodological issues of the World values survey. First, it was mentioned that happiness could be perceived in the different ways by different people in different countries. However, World values survey is focused on the feeling of happiness instead of perception or individual interpretation of the concept. The research includes questions about both life satisfaction and happiness. This methodology was tested in many countries.

Another critical comment was that WVS is mainly oriented on Western countries and does not fully take into account the specifics of Eastern countries. For instance, Japan is a developed country but possesses a value system quite different from US or Europe. Nevertheless, Eduard Ponarin emphasized that the value transition is universal for the whole world although cultural background will always matter. WVS allows us exploring on which stage of modernization is any country included in the survey.

by Natalia Soboleva

Transcript of the lecture (In Russian)