Economic Inequality and Intolerance: Attitudes toward Homosexuality

Using hierarchical linear models fitted to data from the World Values Survey and national statistics for 35 countries, this article builds on the postmaterialist thesis by assessing the impact of economic inequality across and within nations on attitudes toward homosexuality. It provides evidence that tolerance tends to decline as national income inequality rises. For professionals and managers, the results also support the postmaterialist argument that economic development leads to more tolerant attitudes. On the other hand, attitudes of the working class are generally less tolerant, and contrary to expectations of the postmaterialist thesis, are seemingly unaffected by economic development. In other words, economic development influences attitudes only for those who benefit most. These findings have political implications, suggesting that state policies that have the goal of economic growth but fail to consider economic inequality may contribute to intolerant social and political values, an attribute widely considered detrimental for the health of democracy. Inglehart’s (1987, 1990, 1997) postmaterialist thesissuggests that liberal values result from democracy,economic development, and modernization. Impor-tant to this argument is the idea that the prosperity of modern societies allows people to shift their atten-tion frommaterial concerns to so-called “postmaterialist” concerns, such as social issues and self-expression. This shift to postmaterialist values allegedly results in greate