Modernization and Postmodernization

by Ronald Inglehart

Ronald Inglehart’s been doing this world values survey for over 30 years. What he has found is something really quite remarkable, which is that there is a predictable pattern of values change as countries develop economically and get richer. As people move out of poverty and have discretionary income and some sort of insulation between them and want, their values change in predictable ways. In particular, they get a lot more focused on personal fulfilment, self-realisation, quality of life – and they get a lot more sceptical about any kind of authority that stands between them and personal fulfilment and self-realisation and quality of life.