Post-materialism and economic growth: Cultural backlash, 1981–2019

In recent decades it seems that various factors have led to a cultural background change, which although mainly characterized as incremental, in some cases can be sudden. A question therefore arises as to whether the way in which the cultural background has evolved during last decades affects the growth rate of economies. We use an unbalanced panel dataset comprised from 34 OECD countries from 1981 to 2019, and a Least Squares Dummy Variable Correction (LSDVC) method as well as a series of robustness tests including different methods of analysis, adding control variables and breaking the overall period into subperiods. We conclude that the cultural background during the overall period under consideration is characterized as post-materialistic and harms economic growth. Moreover, we highlight both theoretically and empirically the cultural backlash hypothesis since the cultural background of the countries under analysis presents a shift from traditional/materialistic (from 1981 up to 1998) to post-materialist values (from 1999 up to 2019). Doing so, we conclude on a positive effect of cultural background on economic growth when traditional / materialistic values prevail, and a negative effect when post-materialistic values prevail. These results highlight culture as a crucial factor for economic growth and indicate that economic policy makers should take it seriously into account before designing economic policy and in order to explain the effectiveness of economic policies implemented.