Variables on the National Level

The national data matrix is an Excel File of 132 cases: 88 countries incl. Eritrea plus 19 Chinese provinces and 25 Indian states.

The 73 anthropological variables representing the cultural heritage of modern nation states are of three different kinds: 28 basic variables, 6 one-dimensional indices and 39 categories for five cultural types. The last groups measures the percentage of each cultural type in the fields of: traditional economy, family, kinship, marriage and political structure. For the definition of the variables see Codebook. The discussion of the variables takes place under Cultural Heritage.

Anthropological variables enjoy a very strong position in any explanatory model of modern development: Since cultural traits of traditional societies always are chronologically antecedent, they take the quality of „independent“ variables in whatever theoretical models of modern development. Such variables are rather rare and precious.

The construction of the variables (PDF, 89 KB)

List of Variables.pdf (PDF, 92 KB)

Data Matrix (pdf File) (PDF, 162 KB)

Data Matrix (Excel File) (XLS, 165 KB)