Towards new maps of global human values, based on World Values Survey (6) data

This article provides a new approach to the study of global values, based on a statistical analysis of the freely available data from the World Values Survey, 6th wave of global opinion surveys, which has now been made public. In accordance with economic approaches, we contradict the mainstream of the hitherto published global value analyses in sociology (Ronald F. Inglehart) and we think that family values (Schumpeter) and religious values (Barro) can be an important positive asset for society. Too many negative phenomena, which cannot be overlooked anymore by contemporary social science are clearly to be associated with the loss of religion (irrespective of the predominant denomination in a country): the distrust in the state of law; the shadow economy; the distance from altruistic values; a growing fatigue of democracy; the lack of entrepreneurial spirit; et cetera. We provide global maps for the new 22 value factors which result from the promax factor analysis of 78 variables from 45 countries with complete data, and we also calculate performance indices for the countries and the nine main global religious denominations, answering an old query raised by Huntington, 1996. On this account, the 5775 year old religion of Judaism and also Christian Protestantism emerge as the role models for other religions how to combine religion and the traditions of the Enlightenment. Interestingly enough, also Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Roman Catholicism are assigned a positive value on our combined twelve factor indicator. Religiously committed Protestants and Roman Catholics who assign a greater importance to G’d in their life rank better on our scale than do the overall global Protestant and Roman Catholic populations.