Tolerancia: mapa de las reservas mundiales Un estudio comparado desde la opinión pública

This papers aims at dimensioning the level of tolerance and its determinants. For doing so, we construct maps that describe world reserves of tolerance and we consider four basic dimensions: ethnic, religion, homosexuality and lesbianism and immigrants. Keeping in mind that individual perception of tolerance level is influenced by the combination of social factors and personal characteristics; we aim at assessing what are the significant personal attributes that shape tolerant behavior and whether country effects matter. Moreover, we examine whether it is possible to find some typologies of countries. Our dataset is the GALLUP Poll (2007) that includes a large and heterogeneous set of countries (approximately 200). Findings indicate that the probability of being tolerant at the micro-level towards ethnic or religious minorities or immigrants is relatively high while it goes down in the case of homosexuals and lesbians. Moreover, we find that some personal characteristics and environmental factors have a significant impact on the probability of being tolerant. However, it is clear that tolerance is a complex phenomenon whose further research will require a historical perspective.