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The Atlantic
Feb 15 2013
>From Russia, Without Love: Is the Former USSR the Least Romantic Place on Earth?
By Matthew O'Brien
Feb 15 2013, 4:46 PM ET Comment
Whether you spent Valentine's Day curled up with your special someone
or with a book, you can be thankful for one thing: you don't live in
Armenia. (Sorry, Armenia!).
Matters of the heart typically defy rational explanation, but that
hasn't stopped economist super-couple Betsey Stevenson and Justin
Wolfers from crunching the numbers on which countries love the most
and the least. It turns out love is a little less mysterious in the
aggregate than in the particular -- in other words, you can just ask
lots of people about it. And that's exactly what Gallup did in 2006
when it asked people from 136 countries whether they had "experienced
love for a lot of the day yesterday". As you can see in the chart
below from Wolfers, love is a daily phenomenon for most people in most
countries ... but aside from that, it's hard to say much.
As Wolfers points out, there's a weak, though
statistically-significant, relationship between GDP-per-capita and
love, but it doesn't explain too much of what's going on here (though
maybe the answer is the outline looks like a heart?). After all, Japan
reports 50 percent less affection than Rwanda, despite being 25 times
richer.
While there might not be an economic variable tying together loveless
countries, but there is a historical one: they used to be part of the
USSR. Indeed, post-Soviet states make up 14 of the 20 least-loving
countries in the world, with Armenia and its 29.1 percent love rate
setting the standard for unfeeling. (Turkmenistan was the only ex-USSR
country not polled). Something about the experience of Soviet
communism seems to have made these countries less tenderhearted today.
As you can see in the chart below, which compares former Eastern bloc
and Soviet countries, love is something of a scarce commodity in
ex-communist societies, particularly so in the ex-USSR.
The sample size is vanishingly small, but reported love was actually
higher in currently Communist Cuba and Vietnam, at 81.7 and 79.4
percent, respectively. Now, this higher level of affection might just
be about culture, or it might also be about the transition out of
communism. In other words, the kind of "shock therapy" that eastern
Europe tried -- quickly privatizing and deregulating their economies
-- might be so jarring that it disconnects people from one another.
This is, of course, highly speculative, but what did you expect when
we turned the dismal science on love?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/from-russia-without-love-is-the-former-ussr-the-least-romantic-place-on-earth/273227/
From: A. Papazian
Feb 15 2013
>From Russia, Without Love: Is the Former USSR the Least Romantic Place on Earth?
By Matthew O'Brien
Feb 15 2013, 4:46 PM ET Comment
Whether you spent Valentine's Day curled up with your special someone
or with a book, you can be thankful for one thing: you don't live in
Armenia. (Sorry, Armenia!).
Matters of the heart typically defy rational explanation, but that
hasn't stopped economist super-couple Betsey Stevenson and Justin
Wolfers from crunching the numbers on which countries love the most
and the least. It turns out love is a little less mysterious in the
aggregate than in the particular -- in other words, you can just ask
lots of people about it. And that's exactly what Gallup did in 2006
when it asked people from 136 countries whether they had "experienced
love for a lot of the day yesterday". As you can see in the chart
below from Wolfers, love is a daily phenomenon for most people in most
countries ... but aside from that, it's hard to say much.
As Wolfers points out, there's a weak, though
statistically-significant, relationship between GDP-per-capita and
love, but it doesn't explain too much of what's going on here (though
maybe the answer is the outline looks like a heart?). After all, Japan
reports 50 percent less affection than Rwanda, despite being 25 times
richer.
While there might not be an economic variable tying together loveless
countries, but there is a historical one: they used to be part of the
USSR. Indeed, post-Soviet states make up 14 of the 20 least-loving
countries in the world, with Armenia and its 29.1 percent love rate
setting the standard for unfeeling. (Turkmenistan was the only ex-USSR
country not polled). Something about the experience of Soviet
communism seems to have made these countries less tenderhearted today.
As you can see in the chart below, which compares former Eastern bloc
and Soviet countries, love is something of a scarce commodity in
ex-communist societies, particularly so in the ex-USSR.
The sample size is vanishingly small, but reported love was actually
higher in currently Communist Cuba and Vietnam, at 81.7 and 79.4
percent, respectively. Now, this higher level of affection might just
be about culture, or it might also be about the transition out of
communism. In other words, the kind of "shock therapy" that eastern
Europe tried -- quickly privatizing and deregulating their economies
-- might be so jarring that it disconnects people from one another.
This is, of course, highly speculative, but what did you expect when
we turned the dismal science on love?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/from-russia-without-love-is-the-former-ussr-the-least-romantic-place-on-earth/273227/
From: A. Papazian