Human Development and National Culture: A Multivariate Exploration

We examine the relationship between different aspects of human development and Hofstede’s six dimensions of national culture. Using multivariate regression and canonical correlation analysis, we show that all the dimensions of national culture except masculinity have a significant impact on human development, and that the overall strength of the association between the two groups of variables is a high positive one. In general, the direction of the influence of the national culture variables on economic growth differs from the manner they influence other variables, which reinforces the fact that economic growth does not always translate into true people-centred development. Furthermore, the national culture dimensions do not explain much of the variation in a number of health indicators.