Human cultural Diversity - A Cross-national data set

A cross-national data set of 21 variables was assembled for 212 countries from three sources (Barro and Lee 1994; Gordon 2005; CIA World Fact Book 2005). Our data set includes several proxy measures for national wealth, cultural diversity, social instability (both at national and international levels), and demography. Separate diversity measures were calculated for three different cultural domains, namely language, religion and ethnic groups . In addition, wealth variables (per capita GDP, and GINI, the coefficient of income inequality) were assembled, along with indicators of societal functioning drawn from the literature (especially Barro and Lee 1994), including indices of political rights (PRIGHTSB), revolutions and coups d'états (REVCOUP), and political instability (PINSTAB). Measures of international conflict were extracted from the social science literature, and the following were used: the proportion of the time between 1960-85 the country was involved in an external war (WARTIME), the number of international disputes in which the country was involved (TOTINTDISP), and an index of total military expenditure (TOTMILITEXP). Possible confounding variables such as population size (POPSIZE) and the number of international borders (NBINTBORDERS) were also included.