international comparisons

Martin W. found two neat graphs over at The Horizon that show the 2000 world population’s distribution by latitude and longitude.

It’s not that they’re shocking, in the sense that of course we’d expect more people to be living in temperate/tropical latitudes than in the Arctic, given availability of resources to support human settlements (at least until the development of modern conveniences like heat, canned food, and quick transportation to get them to people far from their sources). And the huge spikes where China and India are make sense too. But I still think it’s visually striking to see, for instance, how little of the world’s population is located in the Americas. And the patterns we see here certainly have important implications for global economic development and the likely highly uneven distribution of negative impacts of environmental/climate change, among other issues.

But then, I’m also just a geek about maps and like looking at them in general.

Claude Fischer at Made in America offered some data speaking to the idea that Americans are especially patriotic. That they, in other words, are more likely than citizens of other nations to think that “We’re Number One!”

Fischer provides some evidence by Tom Smith at the International Social Science Programme (ISSP; Tom’s book).  The ISSP, Fischer explains…

…involves survey research institutions in dozens of countries asking representative samples of their populations the same questions. A couple of times the ISSP has had its members ask questions designed to tap respondents’ pride in their countries… One set of questions asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with five statements such as “I would rather be a citizen of [my country] than of any other country in the world” and “Generally, speaking [my country] is a better country than most other countries.”

Smith put responses on a scale from 5 to 25, with 25 being the most patriotic.  Here are the results from some of the affluent, western democracies (on a shortened scale of 5 to 20):

As Fischer says, “Americans were #1 in claiming to be #1.”  Well, sort of.  Americans were the most patriotic among this group.  They turned out to be the second most patriotic of all countries.  Venezuela beat us.

(In any case, what struck me wasn’t the fact that the U.S. is so patriotic, but that many other of these countries were very patriotic as well!   The U.S. is certainly no outlier among this group.  In fact, it looks like all of these countries fall between 14 and 18 on this 20-point scale.  Statistically significant, perhaps, but how meaningful of a difference is it?)

Fischer goes on to ask what’s good and bad about pride and closes with the following concern for U.S. Americans:

We believe that we are #1 almost across the board, when in fact we are far below number one in many arenas – in health, K-12 education, working conditions, to mention just a few. Does our #1 pride then blind us to the possibility that we could learn a thing or two from other countries?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dimitriy T.M. and Keith Marszalek sent in a video by Isao Hashimoto, posted at Wired. The video, titled 1945-1998, shows the location of all known nuclear tests during that period, as well as the nation conducting the tests. It starts off slowly (with the U.S. test during World War II and the two bombs dropped on Japan), and the U.S. has a monopoly on nuclear weapons for several years. By the early 1950s the number of tests starts to increase and the U.K. and Soviet Union start testing. By the late 1’50s and through the ’80s, the flashes indicating tests (with different sound effects to indicate different nation) are pretty much constant, and then drop off quite a lot by the ’90s.

The Wired article points out that there have been two more nuclear tests since 1998 (when the video ends), both by North Korea.

I found this graph over at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization website:

Broken down by type of test; since 1963 almost all testing has been underground:

They also have an interactive map that includes information such as who has signed the test-ban treaty, where tests have occurred, and locations of facilities under the international monitoring system. Here’s a map showing the status of the test-ban treaty; green nations have ratified it, light blue ones have signed but not ratified it, and red ones haven’t signed it (sorry I couldn’t quite fit the whole map on my screen at once, so the screenshot cuts off some areas):

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

How have adults and young people weathered the worldwide economic downturn? This two-minute 12-second video shows that young people have been harder hit by joblessness in almost all OECD countries:

From the OECD Factblog.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The American Anthropological Association website on race has a great collection of the racial and ethnic categories included on Censuses throughout the world, showing how different countries formalize different racial categories.  They illustrate just how diverse ideas about race are and challenge the notion that there is one “correct” question or set of questions.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Christina W. sent in this 1969 video imagining, basically, the internet:

I found it hysterical. I mean, they were sort of bizarrely accurate in their general predictions. The gender roles also cracked me up.

And since we’re on the topic of the internet, the BBC recently conducted an international poll about the internet and David F. sent us a link to it. The methodology:

The finding that has gotten the most attention is that half of people strongly agree, and another 29% somewhat agree, that internet access should be a “fundamental right of all people”:

Concerns about the internet:

Of those who use the internet, beliefs about several topics:

The fact that 45% of respondents said they couldn’t cope without the internet has also gotten quite a bit of attention. However, it turns out that answers vary quite a bit by country; 79% of respondents in the Philippines and Pakistan said they could cope without it, while on the other end, 84% of Japanese respondents said they couldn’t:

I have to say, I find that question and the responses to it odd. You couldn’t cope without access to the internet? What does that mean, exactly? You’d be depressed and miserable without it? Suffer a mental breakdown? Become suicidal? I am a very heavy internet user–my computer is open with email displayed most of the time, even if I’m doing something else, and I spend enormous amounts of time every day actively using the internet. I get anxious when I can’t get access to it. But would I say I couldn’t cope without it? I would be very unhappy, but I wouldn’t, you know, become entirely incapable of functioning and give up the will to live, I don’t think. So I don’t know what to make of that.

Anyway. Hours spent online per week:

And finally, Michael C. sent us this video of a “skeptic’s take” on Google, including consolidation and privacy issues:

It’s interesting given Google’s recent decision to stop censoring internet access in China due to concerns that human rights activists’ emails were being tracked, as well as accusations of privacy issues with Buzz. A friend and I were talking recently about how normally we’re concerned about corporate concentration and control, and yet we both have entirely enmeshed ourselves with Google–using gmail, storing things on Google Docs and Notebook, tracking websites through Google Reader, using YouTube, getting directions from Google Maps…basically my entire online life is routed through Google services (I tried Chrome but didn’t like it, but if I had, even my browser would have been a Google product).

We’re not sure what to make of this — that it’s easier to lull people into a sense of complacency about corporate control if you provide them really nifty stuff they like using? That we aren’t yet really taking concerns about internet privacy seriously? The way these services are set up, it’s simply easier to use all of them than to insist on using a cloud server, reader, email, and so on separately just so we wouldn’t be supporting the concentration of internet services, and this undoubtedly plays a role in reducing our resistance. And our reliance on Google slowly grew over time so that neither of us really noticed how much we used the company’s products until we were actively talking about it (which we were only doing because of the events in China).

What do you think? Do you worry a lot about control over the internet, and particularly Google’s reach into so many aspects of internet usage? Do you really worry about how internet privacy issues affect you personally?

Sociologists have noted that race and gender have been more politicized in the U.S. than class.  In contrast, class is highly politicized in Europe, leading to a much stronger labor movement.   The weak labor movement in the U.S. is partly to blame for the stingy federal policies around vacation and holidays.  The U.S. federal government dictates that employees are given exactly zero paid holiday and vacation days a year (that means, if you get such things, it is because your employer is being generous/in a benefits arms race with other employers).  This is in stark contrast to most other OECD countries:

Yep, that’s right.  In every country included except Canada and Japan (and the U.S.), workers get at least 20 paid vacation days.  In France and Finland, they get 30… an entire month off, paid, every year.

When I show figures like these (and there are many of them, parental leave, work hours, military spending, class inequality, etc) to my students, they are STUNNED.  Most Americans are woefully ignorant of how pro-business U.S. policies are compared to the policies of like countries.  I think this ignorance contributes to the resistance many Americans display when politicians and activists talk about improving protections for workers.

Gin and Tacos:

We’re a nation of people working harder and harder for less and less, and the merest suggestion that we should do anything other than work 9 hour days without pause until we drop dead is met with cries of socialism…

The quality of life of a typical American certainly suffers from our ignorance of life in other nations.  If we were more aware of what a strong labor movement could offer, we might be more supportive of those movements.

I’ve always loved this bumper sticker:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dan S. forwarded a post by Matthew Yglesias in which he presents recent data from the OECD Factbook (larger version at the link).  It is another interesting way to think about income inequality.

First, we can look at a comparison of how much median income earners in the U.S. make compared to other countries (in U.S. dollars).  Luxembourg is the standout at the far right, with the U.S. not far behind, showing the fourth highest median income alongside some Scandinavian countries.  Mexico, Turkey and some Eastern European countries have the lowest median incomes.

A story starts to emerge, however, if we look at the median income of the bottom 10% of earners.  Suddenly the relative position of the U.S. shifts way to the left; the bottom 10% of earners in the U.S. make less than the OECD average.  Notice that the relative placements of the other high income and low income states don’t shift very much.  This means that while people in the U.S. are doing relatively well overall, the poorest people in the U.S. are doing worse than the poorest in about 2/3rds of the other countries:

Then, if you look at the median income of the top 10%, the relative position of the U.S. moves all the way to the right; that is, the top 10% of U.S. earners make more than the top 10% of earners in any other OECD country.  We even beat out Luxembourg:

Most other countries retain their relative position, more or less, with the exception of Sweden, which drops way down.  So the richest Swedes are, relatively speaking, not that rich.

The lesson is that income inequality–the difference between the incomes of the high earners and low earners–is significantly more severe in the U.S. than it is in other OECD countries (and that may be an understatement).

See this post for another graphic showing that income inequality is larger in the U.S. than in most other industrialized countries.  Also, the top 1/100th of a percent in the U.S. brings home a larger proportion of the total earned income in 2007 than they have since 1913.  And here is the percent of total U.S. income that went to the top 1% of earners (23% as of 2006).  Also see our posts breaking down CEO compensation, on the disproportionate tax burden by social class, and on class inequality across U.S. states.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.