Friday, September 29, 2006

Poor, poor pear farmers: I just watched a story on CNN of northern Californian pear farmers whose crop is rotting on the ground because border control efforts have stopped illegal migrant workers. The story was designed to elicit sympathy for these poor, honest farmers. I say serves you right: you got it coming when you make your living off of illegality, and when you impose all the costs of illegals on your neighbors.
Being white or American is not important to whites: The General Social Survey asked Americans in 2004 to choose from a list the three identities that were most important to them. Here are the percentages who said yes to a particular identity broken out in terms of race:

Whites

Family 79.3%
Job 51.3
Region 36.8
Religion 32.5
Gender 30.5
Age 25.3
Social class 18.8
Nationality 12.5
Race 8.8


Blacks

Family 75.2
Race 40.7
Religion 38.8
Job 37.0
Gender 33.2
Age 23.0
Region 21.0
Social class 17.8
Nationality 12.8


Hispanics

Family 77.6
Job 46.9
Region 41.2
Race 35.5
Religion 27.8
Gender 21.3
Age 21.3
Social class 10.8
Nationality 9.9

For all groups, family is cited most often, but beyond that we see different rankings. Many whites and Hispanics identify with their occupations and also the place where they live. Religion is most important to blacks, and least important to Hispanics.

The most striking contrast is race. It ranks second among blacks and fourth among Hispanics, but is at the very bottom of the white list. Blacks and even Hispanics are more than four times more likely than whites to feel that race is important to who they are.

So if race is unimportant to whites, where do they exceed these other groups? An American identity perhaps? These data give no indication of that: blacks have a slighly higher number on the nationality identity. (Nationality is not the best term: people use it to refer to ethnicity as well as citizenship). Whites have slightly higher percentages on occupation, age, social class, and political party (numbers not shown since they are so low).

I'm reminded of the debate between Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor over whether whites should pursue a nationalist or citizenist course. According to these data, neither race nor an American identity seems important to whites. Evidently, some whites can be moved by appeals to gender, age, and social class, but the only popular identity for whites that a society could be organized around is religion, and the tradition of separation of church and state and the fact that American religious groups disagree so much work against religion as an organizing principle .

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

New report undermines the belief that Latinos are an unmitigated blessing for America: Jared Taylor's New Century Foundation has released a statistical report on Hispanics. Here are its major findings (go here to download a copy):


Income and Wealth

Per capita income of Hispanics is one half that of non-Hispanic whites, and household net worth is less than one tenth.

Fifty percent of Hispanic households use some form of welfare, the highest rate of any major population group.


Crime

Hispanics are 3.3 times more likely to be in prison than whites; they are 4.2 times more likely to be in prison for murder, and 5.8 times more likely to be in prison for felony drug crimes.

Young Hispanics are 19 times more likely than young whites (and slightly more likely than young blacks) to be in youth gangs.


Education

Hispanics drop out of high school at three times the white rate and twice the black rate.

Even third-generation Hispanics drop out of school at a higher rate than blacks and are less likely to be college graduates.

From 1992 to 2003, Hispanic illiteracy in English rose from 35 percent to 44 percent.

The average Hispanic 12th-grader reads and does math at the level of the average white 8th-grader.


Families and Health

At 43 percent, the Hispanic illegitimacy rate is twice the white rate, and Hispanic women have abortions at 2.7 times the white rate.

Hispanics are three times more likely than whites not to have medical insurance, and die from AIDS and tuberculosis at three times the white rate.

In California, the cost of free medical care for illegal aliens forced 60 hospitals to close between 1993 and 2003.


Attitudes

Only 33 percent of citizens of Hispanic origin consider themselves “Americans” first. The rest consider themselves either “Hispanic/Latino” or their former nationality first.
Liberals choose to live in neighborhoods that are a whopping 16% black: We're told that conservatives are overt or closet racists. We are in deep need of sensitivity training, and after repeating the chant "George Washington Carver gave us peanut butter" enough times, the curtains will be drawn back, we will see the eternal light, and enter the holy realm where liberals dwell. Yes, liberal sainthood is clearly shown in where they choose to live. According to the General Social Survey, conservatives prove their baseness by living in neighborhoods that are only 14% black. Liberals, on the other hand, guided by purer, enlightened minds, surpass that figure by a whole 2%.

It's clear why so many people, even professed conservatives, mouth all the right views on race: it's all benefit and no cost. You get a status boost as you convince people that you're not philistine. Evidently, people are not troubled by a dissonance between beliefs and observations. Like the saying goes, talk is cheap. It would please me very much if every time a white guy said "America is a very racist country" someone would call him on it and say "You are all talk unless you live in a black neighborhood and send your kids to a black school. So do you?"

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

IQ rises with lighter skin among blacks: Black Americans have an average of about 20% Caucasian ancestry with evidently wide variation, and skin color is a crude index of how much of this ancestry an individual has. General Social Survey interviewers judged their black respondents on skin tone, ranging from "very dark brown" to "very light brown." Participants were also given a vocabulary test, where scores ranged from 0 to 10 correct. This variable serves as a simple measure of IQ. I transformed test scores into IQs (setting the white mean at 100), and these are the averages:

Very dark brown 87
Dark brown 84
Medium brown 90
Light brown 93
Very light brown 91

The extremes have small sample sizes. If we drop those, we see a clear pattern of rising IQs with lighter skin color. The modal category is "medium brown," and this group's IQ is probably higher than the 85 IQ usually seen in IQ studies due to the fact that verbal IQ tends to be higher than math IQ among blacks.

Skeptics will argue that these numbers reflect the greater educational opportunities given to light-skinned blacks, but when a white guy sees someone with characteristically black features, he thinks "black person" not "light-skinned black person."
Men kill bambies while women cross stitch: To the folks who shut down Sixteen Volt's blog, you'll be happy to know that I plan to write twice as much about how men and women are different, and just to please you, I'll make an effort to document those differences that reflect poorly on women. But today, I'll be nice.

While someone with a very active imagination might be able to think that women are turned away from male-dominated fields, it simply is not credible to say there is something called "hobby discrimination." People pursue certain leisurely activities because they find them pleasurable, pure and simple. And it's not like mommy and daddy assigned you a gender-appropriate hobby. The General Social Survey tells us that 23% of men went to an auto race last year versus 10% of women (and I'm sure half the women were dragged there by their husbands). Revolutionary conclusion number one: men like cars more than women. Almost half (47%) of women did arts and crafts in the past year, while only 31% of men did (and the differences are much sharper for whites since black women are not "craftsy"). Revolutionary conclusion number two: women like toll painting more than men. Fifty-one percent of men hunted and/or fished last year. Only 27% of women did the same. Revolutionary conclusion number three: men like to catch stuff more than women do.

I can document this kind of thing for people, but all experience tells us the men and women use their free time to do different things. My wife is repulsed when I watch a violent film: I fall asleep when she grows flowers. Hobbies are the free expression of who you are much more than what society says you should do as a member of a particular gender group, and they show us that men and women are different.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Ordinary people accept nature and nurture: In 2004, the General Social Survey asked people if an athletic black man is explained more by genes or environment, and they were asked to give the answers percentages in 5% increments. The average white American answered 55% nurture. After years of seeing college students turned off by biosocial explanations, I was pleased by this number. I next looked at answers in terms of the respondent's IQ (based on a vocab test): the smartest group was a bit more nurturist than average at 60% environment. The dumbest group thought it was 95% genetic. High intelligence appears to move people in the wrong direction.

Next, I wanted to see how people felt about moral behavior. Respondents were asked about a Hispanic woman who is always good. I predicted that the average would be almost all environment. I was wrong: it was 55% nurturing--the same as the black athlete vignette. I was right, but only for the most intelligent group: they averaged 90% environment. The dullest group said 100% genes.

While it looks like education and taking the proper attitude to enhance one's status may shift a person in the nurturist direction, people in general seem to recognize that both genes and environment play a role in both physical and moral arenas. This gives me a little more faith that, while I'm surrounded by colleagues who make the world feel like a place of nutty radical nurturists, ordinary folks have some sense.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Does capitalism breed selfishness? I am constantly reading in social science literature that capitalism breeds selfishness. The Soviets might not have had a decent standard of living, but, hey, at least they cared about each other. The World Values Surveys asked people how willing were they to help various groups: poor people, the sick and disabled, neighbors, etc. I calculated an index of the average of their answers, the higher numbers indicating less willingness to help:

"Selfishness" Index
Belarus (2000) 18.33
Lithuania (1999) 14.69
Ukraine (1999) 14.61
Russian Federation (1999) 14.13
Estonia (1999) 13.32
Latvia (1999) 13.00
Great Britain (1999) 12.26
Hungary (1999) 12.21
Denmark (1999) 11.80
Germany West (1999) 11.72
France (1999) 11.72
Bulgaria (1999) 11.71
Finland (2000) 11.66
Czech Republic (1999) 11.65
Romania (1999) 11.53
Northern Ireland (1999) 11.44
Poland (1999) 11.39
Germany East (1999) 11.28
Austria (1999) 11.23
Luxembourg (1999) 11.13
Greece (1999) 11.12
Portugal (1999) 11.11

World 11.8

Netherlands (1999) 11.05
Belgium (1999) 10.95
Slovakia (1999) 10.91
Slovenia (1999) 10.89
Italy (1999) 10.81
Iceland (1999) 10.78
Malta (1999) 10.51
Croatia (1999) 10.33
Ireland (1999) 9.88
Sweden (1999) 9.62

Funny how all those years of communism didn't produce boatloads of humanitarians, and how capitalism hasn't turned everyone into devils. Oh, but I can anticipate you good sociologists out there. Americans weren't asked the question, and you're absolutely positive that the uniquely wicked American system would put us at the very top of this list. It's a good thing they weren't asked the question, so you can hold on to that cherished notion. (As if the data would change your mind anyway).
The "free" in freerepublic.com means "you're free to say what we tell you to say": I occasionally post my politically relevant comments on freerepublic.com. This recent post got me banned from the website for being a "racist":

The ghetto ain't the only reason for black violence: Steven Pinker, usually a reliable source, tells us in The Blank Slate that blacks who live in the suburbs are no more violent than their white counterparts. Uh, yes they are Steven. According to the 2004 Uniform Crime Reports, 36% of murderers arrested in American suburbs were black, and African Americans are not even close to 36% of all suburbanites. Political correctness infects even our best social scientists.

Horror of horrors, I blasphemed by uttering--can you feel your heart beating fast--a statistic. At least I know what I'm getting with liberals. Conservatives just masquerade as tough-minded people, and frankly it's disgusting.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Does bad science in the name of sensitivity never end??? From CNN's website: "All Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 should be routinely tested for HIV to help catch infections earlier and stop the spread of the deadly virus, federal health officials recommended Thursday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said HIV testing should become about as common as a cholesterol check. Nearly half of new HIV infections are discovered when doctors are trying to diagnose illness in a sick patient who has come for care, CDC officials said."

Yes, the best science shows us that the absolute strongest predictor of HIV infection is not being a child or a senior citizen. Future generations will laugh at us (or cry) for the ridiculous efforts we made to (unsuccessfully) convince people that AIDs has nothing to do with homosexuality; that street crime has nothing to do with race; and that terrorism has nothing to do with the Muslim religion.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Smart countries have less homicide



Using Richard Lynn's data on national IQ and WHO data on male homicide victimization, I calculated a correlation of -.46 across 30 countries. The scatterplot is shown above. Argentina, Uruguay, and especially the United States are well above the regression line. Black Americans might raise homicide levels more than they lower average IQ, but murder rates among white Americans are higher than expected. This has been attributed to any number of things: frontier cultures that became violent due to a non-existent or ineffective criminal justice system (i.e., the Scots-Irish and the Wild West); immigration selecting for restlessness; and handy guns, which embolden criminals and turn a fight into a murder.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

The ghetto ain't the only reason for black violence: Steven Pinker, usually a reliable source, tells us in The Blank Slate that blacks who live in the suburbs are no more violent than their white counterparts. Uh, yes they are Steven. According to the 2004 Uniform Crime Reports, 36% of murderers arrested in American suburbs were black, and African Americans are not even close to 36% of all suburbanites. Political correctness infects even our best social scientists.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Moral relativism spreads with economic development: The World Values Survey asked respondents if prostitution is justifiable. Answers ranged from 1 (never) to 10 (always). Here are the mean scores ranked from most to least accepting:

Switzerland 5.3
Spain 4.7
New Zealand 4.4
West Germany 4.3
Austria 4.1
Uruguay 3.8
East Germany 3.6
Canada 3.4
Argentina 3.4
Israel 3.4
Luxembourg 3.4
Great Britain 3.4
Slovenia 3.3
Philippines 3.2
Finland 3.2
Mexico 3.1
Chile 3.1
Greece 3.1
USA 3.1
Belarus 3.0
Iceland 2.8
Czech Republic 2.8
Dominican Republic 2.7
India 2.7
South Africa 2.6
Moldova 2.6
Ireland 2.5
Italy 2.4
Singapore 2.4
Lithuania 2.4

World 2.3

Russia 2.3
Colombia 2.3
Brazil 2.3
Romania 2.2
Japan 2.2
Korea 2.2
Venezuela 2.2
Northern Ireland 2.1
Peru 2.1
Ukraine 2.1
Kyrgyzstan 2.0
Croatia 2.0
Taiwan 2.0
Armenia 2.0
Uganda 1.8
El Salvador 1.8
Georgia 1.8
Serbia 1.8
Bosnia 1.7
Montenegro 1.7
Macedonia 1.6
Azerbaijan 1.6
Nigeria 1.6
Albania 1.4
Algeria 1.3
Saudi 1.3
Tanzania 1.2
Bangladesh 1.2
Iran 1.2
Vietnam 1.2
Egypt 1.1
Pakistan 1.1
China 1.1
Indonesia 1.1
Jordan 1.0

A clear pattern emerges here. Western countries lead the world in accepting prostitution. By contrast, Muslim countries uniformly condemn it. A difference in values couldn't be clearer. Other regions of the world fall somewhere in the middle. In less developed societies, especially the Muslim societies, people look to tradition to form their moral attitudes, while wealthy countries have moved toward a contract morality where any behavior, even renting a girl like you do a pay toilet, is okay if it is agreed to by both parties.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Does all the world want democracy? We hear it a lot these days about how democratic political systems are desired by all people, everywhere. But this blogger cares not for platitudes, but only for systematically observed attitudes. The World Values Surveys asked people all around the world if they think that this form of government is a good idea. Here's what I found:

Percent saying democratic political systems are a bad idea:

Russia 37.0
Kyrgyzstan 18.5
Philippines 17.6
Poland 16.3
Slovakia 15.9
Ukraine 15.4
South Korea 15.4
Chile 15.2
Brazil 15.1
Armenia 15.0
El Salvador 14.6
Iran 14.4
Lithuania 13.9
Bulgaria 13.6
Estonia 13.3
Latvia 12.7
Finland 12.6
Hungary 12.9
Australia 12.6
Great Britain 12.3
Colombia 12.0
Pakistan 11.9
Canada 11.6
Belarus 11.5
Romania 11.3
USA 10.8
Belgium 10.7
Slovenia 10.6
France 10.6
South Africa 10.2
Ireland 9.9
Argentina 9.4
Georgia 9.4

World 9.2


Iraq 9.0
Portugal 8.8
Macedonia 8.7
Puerto Rico 8.3
Japan 8.2
Turkey 8.1
Luxembourg 8.1
Northern Ireland 8.1
Bosnia 8.0
East Germany 7.7
Czech Republic 7.5
Algeria 7.3
Uganda 7.0
Peru 7.0
India 7.0
Switzerland 6.8
Tanzania 6.8
Taiwan 6.8
Venezuela 6.5
Malta 6.4
Singapore 6.2
Jordan 6.1
Serbia 5.9
Montenegro 5.5
Nigeria 4.7
Spain 4.7
West Germany 4.5
Vietnam 4.5
Morocco 4.4
Indonesia 4.1
Uruguay 3.9
Austria 3.8
China 3.7
Netherlands 3.6
Italy 3.4
Sweden 2.6
Azerbaijan 2.5
Albania 2.4
Croatia 2.3
Iceland 2.1
Denmark 2.0
Bangalesh 1.7
Egypt 1.4
Greece 1.1

First, affection for democracy is widespread around the world. No country has even close to a majority of people taking a position against it. Having said that, Russia is far and away the most anti-democratic country, and Eastern European and former Soviet countries in general are toward the top of the list. Contrary to what some people might expect, Muslims like democracy as much as anyone. Of course, being in favor a democratic political system does not mean that people are good at voting for candidates likely to preserve it. Asian, African, and Latin regions of the world are mixed. Western nations generally fall toward the bottom of the list, but English-speaking countries are on the high end of this group.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Is the increase in autism due to delayed fatherhood? On September 5th, the LA Times described a study that found that fathers over 30 are much more at risk of having an autistic child than younger men. It is widely known that the prevalence of autism has been on the increase in recent years, but researchers don't know why. I looked at the General Social Survey and found evidence that the increase might be due, in part, to men waiting longer to become fathers. I looked at men ages 40-50, and in 1994, the mean age for first-time fatherhood was 25.8. By 2004, the average had risen to 27.2. This might not sound like much, but let's look at it another way. In 1994, 24% of men became fathers after age 29. In 2004, the percentage was 37. That is a 54% increase in only one decade in the number of men starting fatherhood later in life.

According to the team that conducted the study, the association between the father's older age and autism might be due to "spontaneous mutations in sperm-producing cells and alterations in genetic 'imprinting,' which controls the genes that are activated during development."
Having kids move blacks to the left: In an earlier post, I presented numbers from the General Social Survey (GSS) that squared with Steve Sailer's thesis that low housing prices facilitate family formation among whites which then turns them into political conservatives. So my next question is: what does a large family do to black parents? According to the GSS, lots of kids moves blacks to the left. Data on the 2000 presidential election (the most recent available to the public) reveals that blacks who voted for Gore had a mean of .75 children living at home with them, while Bush supporters averaged only .38. (The numbers are low compared to those in my analysis of whites because I included older parents here to maximize sample size).

Conservative values might explain why some blacks voted for Bush, but not why they have fewer kids. Having even one child seems to cause a shift: 14% of those with no kids voted Republican, but that drops to 7% for those with at least one. Whites are a middle-income group: perhaps concern for your children leads people to see big government as an obstacle, while black parents, as a low-income group that has turned to government for answers for decades, look even more to Democrats in order to help their children.

So Steve's thesis is a race-specific one that does not seem to apply to blacks. He also argues that whites, as a group, avoid having kids until they own a nice house--the kind that is safe and enjoyable for kids, in a good neighborhood. This attitude does not seem widespread among blacks, so Democrat strategists should not draw the lesson from this analysis that cheap housing in good neighborhoods will increase the number of blacks with children, thereby attracting more black supporters. (As if that were possible--the only thing harder to find than a black Republican is me, a conservative social scientist).

This analysis reminds me of something I have seen many, many times in research studies: findings are almost never the same for blacks and whites. Social scientists--the most politically correct people in the world--routinely analyze the two groups separately. They force black and white data points to live in different neighborhoods because they know that they are so distinct from each other that they must do it.

By the way, I also looked to see what factors other than number of kids might distinguish black Republicans from Democrats. I was surprised that the two groups do not differ much in terms of income, education, IQ, occupational prestige, or religiosity. The only thing I found was gender: men were almost two times as likely as women to vote for Bush.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Seventeen percent of the world is anti-Semitic: The World Values Survey asked people if there were certain kinds of people you wouldn't want as neighbors. The following proportions refer to Jews:

Iraq (2004) .83
Turkey (2001) .62
Republic of Korea (2001) .41
Serbian Republic of Bosnia (2001) .36
Spain (2000) .34
Poland (1999) .26
Republic of Moldova (2002) .25
Bosnia Federation (2001) .24
Romania (1999) .23
Uganda (2001) .23
Lithuania (1999) .22
Malta (1999) .21
Kyrgyzstan (2003) .20
Bangladesh (2002) .20
Macedonia, Republic of (2001) .20
South Africa (2001) .19
Greece (1999) .19

World .17

Zimbabwe (2001) .17
Bulgaria (1999) .17
Albania (2002) .17
Slovenia (1999) .17
Egypt (2000) .17
Croatia (1999) .16
Belarus (2000) .15
Italy (1999) .13
Northern Ireland (1999) .12
Russian Federation (1999) .11
Ireland (1999) .11
Estonia (1999) .11
Belgium (1999) .11
Portugal (1999) .11
Ukraine (1999) .10
Uruguay (1996) .10
Slovakia (1999) .10
Luxembourg (1999) .10
United States (1999) .09
Chile (2000) .09
Germany East (1999) .09
Austria (1999) .09
Finland (2000) .08
Argentina (1999) .06
Great Britain (1999) .06
France (1999) .06
Latvia (1999) .05
Germany West (1999) .05
Czech Republic (1999) .04
Iceland (1999) .04
Canada (2000) .04
Denmark (1999) .02
Sweden (1999) .02
Netherlands (1999) .02

According to this sample, 17% of the world is anti-Semitic. Not surprisingly, Muslim countries rank high--83% of Iraqis wouldn't want a Jewish neighbor. (But countries like Egypt are in the middle). Korea--the only East Asian country in the sample--ranks very high, as does Spain among European countries. Eastern Europe is mixed with higher numbers in the south. SS African countries fall towards the middle. South American nations have low numbers, as does Western Europe, especially in the north. English-speaking countries also fall toward the bottom.

Monday, September 04, 2006

"Affordable Family Formation" and General Social Survey data






Steve Sailer wanted to know what General Social Survey (GSS) data say about his "affordable family formation" thesis that inexpensive housing allows young, white people to get married, have children, which then convinces them to vote Republican. Preliminary analysis showed that the pattern of voting Republican as family size grows is sharper among younger, white Americans, so the numbers shown here refer to people ages 18 to 45, as of 2004.

First, I looked at never married people, and the first graph shows that white, married men were more likely to vote for Bush than their never-married counterparts. This tendency is even stronger among women, as shown in the second graph--a majority of never-married women voted for Gore.

Now turning to the question of family size, the third graph shows that the percent of men voting for Bush in 2000 increases with the number of children they have: few men with large families voted for Gore. For women (graph 4), the big shift occurs between those with no kids, and those with one or more children. Almost one-half of white women with no children voted Democrat, but only about 30% did if they had any children.

Steve was also interested in the mean number of children at home for whites of different political orientations. Once again, patterns are sharper among younger whites who have kids living at home, so I focused on them:


Mean children at home for NH whites ages 18-45 (2004)

Extremely liberal .78
Liberal .59
Slightly liberal .64
Moderate .90
Slightly cons. .94
Conservative 1.20
Extremely cons. 1.02

It is clear that young, white conservatives have bigger families than their liberal counterparts. From these data, it is unclear what is driving what: family life may move people right, or conservatives might be more likely to choose marriage and large families. One line of evidence that supports Steve's idea is that these patterns seem to have emerged in the last decade. Among empty-nesters, white liberals have almost as many kids as conservatives. The large family/voting Republican correlation has grown in the last decade, perhaps fueled by trends in housing prices.

The GSS data are also consistent with the state-level data that Steve analyzed which show that red states have cheap housing prices and white families with lots of babies. That survey data would show the same pattern at the individual-level as data at a macro-level is significant.

More later....

Friday, September 01, 2006

In Denmark, you're supposed to have unconditional regard for all humanity...except for your mother, that is: The World Values Survey asked people if parents should always be loved and respected, or do they have to earn it. Here are the proportion in each country that said always:

Proportion saying parents should always be respected:

Viet Nam (2001) .99
Puerto Rico (2001) .97
Morocco (2001) .97
Zimbabwe (2001) .96
Egypt (2000) .95
China (2001) .94
Pakistan (2001) .94
Nigeria (2000) .94
Jordan (2001) .94
Venezuela (2000) .94
Singapore (2002) .94
Kyrgyzstan (2003) .94
Philippines (2001) .94
El Salvador (1999) .94
Taiwan Province of China (1994) .93
Algeria (2002) .93
Armenia (1997) .93
Serbian Republic of Bosnia (2001) .93
Brazil (1997) .93
Republic of Korea (2001) .92
Saudi Arabia (2003) .92
Malta (1999) .92
Azerbaijan (1997) .92
Georgia (1996) .91
Macedonia, Republic of (2001) .91
Colombia (1998) .91
Uganda (2001) .91
South Africa (2001) .91
Peru (2001) .91
Tanzania, United Republic Of (2001) .91
Republic of Moldova (2002) .91
Bosnia Federation (2001) .90
Indonesia (2001) .90
Mexico (2000) .90
Bangladesh (2002) .90
Iran (Islamic Republic of) (2000) .89
India (2001) .89
Argentina (1999) .88
Spain (2000) .88
Poland (1999) .87
Chile (2000) .87
Montenegro (2001) .87
Serbia (2001) .87
Albania (2002) .87
Ukraine (1999) .86
Dominican Republic (1996) .86
Turkey (2001) .85
Russian Federation (1999) .85
Portugal (1999) .84
Romania (1999) .84
Hungary (1999) .83
Lithuania (1999) .82
Bulgaria (1999) .80
Italy (1999) .79
Canada (2000) .79
Slovenia (1999) .78
Uruguay (1996) .77
United States (1999) .77
Northern Ireland (1999) .77
Latvia (1999) .77
France (1999) .75
Czech Republic (1999) .74
Australia (1995) .74
Slovakia (1999) .73
Estonia (1999) .72
Japan (2000) .72
Switzerland (1996) .71
Ireland (1999) .71
Belarus (2000) .71
Germany East (1999) .70
Greece (1999) .69
Belgium (1999) .67
Austria (1999) .65
Great Britain (1999) .65
New Zealand (1998) .64
Croatia (1999) .63
Finland (2000) .62
Iceland (1999) .61
Luxembourg (1999) .59
Norway (1996) .52
Germany West (1999) .51
Sweden (1999) .43
Netherlands (1999) .32
Denmark (1999) .28

It looks like the less developed world still feels unconditional regard for mom and dad, but Eastern Europe shows a noticeable share of people who feel differently. It's a bit more mixed in wealthy countries, and the clearest pattern here is that many northern Europeans feel no obligation to love their parents. It seems that individualism and modernization breaks down the traditional loyalty to family. In Denmark, you're supposed to have unconditional regard for all humanity...except for your mother, that is.

Are gun owners mentally ill?

  Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...