Does big government weaken the social fabric?

Perhaps I should confess at the outset that I cannot provide a definitive answer to this question. What I am about to present is some evidence suggesting that big government might weaken the social fabric. I think the evidence is sufficiently strong to suggest that the question should be considered seriously. (I provided similar evidence a couple of years ago – and I might have to write about it a few more times before many people take notice!)


The current post is one of a series in which I am looking at how values differ between high income countries with big governments and those with smaller governments. Previous posts have looked at child qualities that are encouraged, attitudes toward work and success and tolerance of neighbours who are different.

The indicators I am using to measure strength of the social fabric are estimates of the percentages of populations who say that the following activities are never justifiable: falsely claiming government benefits; cheating on taxes; and accepting a bribe. As in previous posts in the series I have focused on 14 high-income countries with broadly similar European cultural heritage for which data is available from the most recent World Values Survey.

In the table below these countries have been ranked by size of government, using government spending as a percentage of GDP as an indicator of size of government. (For each variable the five highest numbers are shown against a red background and the five lowest ratings are shown against a blue background.)

The data in this table provides evidence that people in high income countries with big governments tend to have more permissive attitudes toward a range of anti-social activities than those in countries with smaller governments. That doesn’t establish causation, but I think it should make researchers interested in trying to understand what is happening.

Why should we be concerned if big government does tend to make people more relaxed about welfare fraud, tax evasion and bribery? Can’t the problem be solved by just employing more public servants to prevent such anti-social activity? I don’t think so. Increased surveillance poses further problems including the added cost of service delivery and the increased intrusion of government officials into the private lives of citizens.

Are people who live in welfare states more tolerant?

I am not sure why I ever thought that people who live in welfare states would tend to be more tolerant than people in countries with smaller governments. It might have something to do with all the talk about social solidarity and social cohesion by those advocating collectivist policies. Rather than thinking about egality and fraternity I should have been thinking about liberty - and the historical links between respect for the rights of others and civility.


World Values Surveys ask a relevant question about the people respondents would not like to have as neighbours. People were asked to choose from a long list including drug addicts, heavy drinkers and people with criminal records. Reluctance to live next to people belonging to some of these groups may have more to do with safety concerns than with intolerance. Three groups that seem to me to provide a fairly neutral test of levels of tolerance in different countries are people who have aids, immigrants or foreign workers and homosexuals.

As in other recent posts on differences in values between people living in countries with relatively big and relatively small governments (here and here) I have focused on14 high-income countries with broadly similar European heritage for which data is available from the most recent World Values Survey (WVS 2005 – 2008). These countries have been ranked by size of government, using government spending as a percentage of GDP as an indicator of size of government (OECD Economic Outlook data on general government outlays as a percentage of nominal GDP, averaged over the three years 2005–08).

In the table below the five highest percentages for each variable are shown against a red background and the five lowest percentages are shown against a blue background.

Apart from Swedes, it seems that people who live in countries with big governments are relatively intolerant about who they want as neighbours. Social solidarity apparently does not include people who are perceived to be different.

Are we losing faith that hard work brings success?

I have recently been thinking about differences in values held by people in high income countries with big governments and those with smaller governments. In my last post I looked at evidence from the World Values Survey of differences in qualities that people consider are important for children to learn. One of the differences noted was that people in countries with relatively small governments tend to place more emphasis on hard work as an important characteristic to encourage in children. In this post I look at more evidence relating to beliefs about hard work.


The survey question I am looking at requires respondents to assign a value from one to ten depending on whether their beliefs are closer to the proposition that ‘in the long run, hard work usually brings a better life’ (1) or ‘hard work doesn´t generally bring success - it´s more a matter of luck and connections’ (10). I have focused on the percentages who are most optimistic that hard work brings success, looking at population averages and averages for young people aged 15 - 29.

As in the last post I have focused on 14 high-income countries with broadly similar European cultural heritage for which data is available from the most recent World Values Survey. The results are presented in the table below, along with the data in my last post on the importance for children to learn the virtue of hard work. As in the last post, the five highest percentages for each variable are shown against a red background and the five lowest percentages are shown against a blue background.

As might be expected, there seems to be a reasonably close correspondence between emphasis on the importance for children to be encouraged to learn the virtue of hard work and the belief that hard work usually brings a better life. People in countries with small governments are more likely to hold those beliefs than those in countries with big governments.

What should we to make of this result? It could mean that incentives associated with big government tend to weaken the work ethic. It could mean that a weakening of the work ethic tends to promote big government. Or, as seems more likely to me, the results might reflect a complex interaction between cultural heritage and changes in beliefs, values, ideologies and economic incentives.

The results in the last column of the table are particularly interesting (and somewhat disturbing to me as an Australian). In most of the countries considered the proportion of young people who are optimistic that hard work brings success is somewhat lower than for the population as a whole. In the case of Australia, however, the difference is more substantial. Closer inspection of the data indicates that the proportion of young Australians who think that success is a matter of luck and connections is also lower than for the population as a whole. So, members of the younger generation are not particularly cynical about the rewards of hard work – they are just markedly less optimistic about this than older generations.

It would be premature to conclude that these results indicate that we are heading toward some kind of brave new world where few people bother to work hard because no-one believes strongly any more that hard work brings success. I need a better understanding of the implications of changes in beliefs about the relationship between hard work and success before reaching any conclusions. If anyone knows where I can find relevant research perhaps they could enlighten me.

Does the importance of values encouraged in children vary with size of government?

If big government is taking us towards a brave new world we might expect this to show up in differences in values held by people in countries with big and small governments. As discussed in my last post there seems to be some evidence that people in high-income countries with big governments tend to hold more secular-rational values than those in high-income countries with small governments. In this post I explore this further by looking particularly at differences in the values that children are encouraged to learn at home.


World Values Surveys ask a directly relevant question about what qualities it is especially important for children to be encouraged to learn at home. Respondents are asked to choose from the following list: good manners, independence, hard work, feeling of responsibility, imagination, tolerance and respect for other people, thrift (saving money and things), determination/ perseverance, religious faith, unselfishness and obedience.

I have focused on the 14 high-income countries with protestant or catholic heritage for which data is available from the most recent World Values Survey (WVS 2005 – 2008). These countries have been ranked by size of government, using government spending as a percentage of GDP as an indicator of size of government (OECD Economic Outlook data on general government outlays as a percentage of nominal GDP, averaged over the three years 2005–08).

Child qualities which apparently differ in importance between the countries with big and relatively small governments were identified by looking at the differences between the averages for the four countries with largest and smallest size of government. The differences were greatest (relative to the mean) in the case of hard work, thrift, religious faith and unselfishness.

The results are shown in the following table in which countries are ranked by size of government. For each variable the five highest numbers are shown against a red background and the five lowest ratings are shown against a blue background.

The results suggest that hard work tends to be more strongly encouraged in the countries with relatively small governments, while thrift tends to be more strongly encouraged in countries with big governments. (I find that result surprising because hard work and thrift often tend to be linked together as traditional virtues.) The results for religious faith and unselfishness do not appear to be consistently related to size of government.

It will be interesting to see whether any consistent patterns emerge from an examination of other values that apparently differ according to size of government.