Page 325 - Cultures and Organizations

290 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

Evidence of a relationship among wealth, cultural femininity, and num-
ber of children was reported in Chapter 5. Education level has an infl u-
ence as well: less educated populations tend to have more children. Across
twenty-eight wealthy countries (those that had a GNI per capita of more
than 10,000 U.S. dollars in 1999), indulgence versus restraint is the main

significant predictor of birthrates, explaining more than education level or
29
national wealth. Populations that do not feel very happy and healthy are
not very excited about having children, especially if they reflect the educa-

tion level that is typical of an economically developed country.
We mentioned already that higher indulgence is associated with lower
death rates from cardiovascular diseases even after controlling for national
30
differences in wealth. This association proves that the higher subjective
well-being that indulgence represents is actually not so subjective. More
restrained societies have some tangible health problems that are not the
product of people’s imaginations. Cardiovascular disease is a complex phe-
nomenon with multiple causes at the individual level, but it seems that
unhappiness can be one of them.
National governments of low-fertility countries are usually concerned
about raising birthrates, but they have few tools to achieve this goal. Apart
from lowering education levels, which is hardly a choice, their only option
is to increase the level of happiness in the country, which would enhance
subjective health and optimism. Unfortunately, there is no known method
for boosting the percentage of happy people in a given nation. It may seem
that economic development should have such an effect. However, this pro-
cess may take a long time. Between 1998 and 2008 almost all countries
in the European part of the former Soviet Union, as well as Bulgaria and
Romania, doubled their GNI per capita. Still, the dismally low happiness
levels that characterized them at the outset of the period remained virtu-
ally unchanged a decade later. And the demographic crisis that is devastat-

ing all of them continued.
Table 8.2 summarizes the differences between indulgent and restrained
societies discussed so far.

Indulgence Versus Restraint, Importance of
Friends, and Consumer Attitudes

In Chapter 4 we saw that having a “close, intimate friend” is a value that
is more likely to be selected by respondents in individualist societies. But
what about the importance of friends in general? If indulgence stands for a