Happy Variety of Capitalism 2.0

Veröffentlicht am 13.08.2016

Quality of life is made up of many different elements that are often directly or indirectly related to each other. The 16 indicators for 25 countries used in this report show a clear picture of commonalities: In some countries, life is good along many dimensions – other countries have room to catch up in several places. Our cluster analysis identified six different varieties of capitalism:

The happy variety of capitalism: All Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) as well as the Netherlands and Switzerland plus Germany and New Zealand have achieved a high quality of life according to all 16 indicators considered.

The Anglo-Saxon variety of capitalism: Australia, Canada, the UK, the US and Ireland are also doing very well in many ways. However, the values for the effectiveness of government, freedom of the press, the working hours and income inequality of families are not as good as in the countries of the happy variety.

The less happy variety of capitalism with Belgium, France and Austria consistently shows lower values than the countries of the happy variety of capitalism.

The East Asian variety of capitalism includes Japan and South Korea. Some indicators show very good values there (e.g. unemployment), while others have rather poor values (press freedom, gender equity and the birth rate).

The southern European variety of capitalism with Portugal, Spain and Italy is clearly lagging behind the happy countries along all the 16 indicators used here.