Editing World Values Survey (section)

====Culture variations====
A somewhat simplified analysis is that following an increase in [[standards of living]], and a transit from development country via [[industrialization]] to  [[post-industrial society|post-industrial]] [[Society#Knowledge society|knowledge society]], a country tends to move diagonally in the direction from lower-left corner (poor) to upper-right corner (rich), indicating a transit in both dimensions.

However, the attitudes among the population are also highly correlated with the philosophical, political and religious ideas that have been dominating in the country. Secular-rational values and [[materialism]] were formulated by philosophers and the [[left-wing politics]] side in the [[French Revolution]], and can consequently be observed especially in countries with a long history of social democratic or socialistic policy, and in  countries where a large portion of the population have studied philosophy and science at universities.  Survival values are characteristic for eastern-world countries and self-expression values for western-world countries. In a liberal [[post-industrial economy]], an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival and freedom of thought for granted, resulting in that self-expression is highly valued.