Global Prosperity and Uneven Belonging: Replication Package for the 136-Country Discrimination Analysis

This replication package accompanies Carlos Federico Obregon Diaz’s article Global Prosperity and Uneven Belonging: Five Development Objectives and a 136-Country Assessment of Reported Discrimination. The study applies the Economics of Belonging framework to international development, distinguishing five objectives: economic growth, macroeconomic stability, income distribution, human capabilities, and social and institutional belonging. The empirical extension examines reported discrimination across 136 countries and territories using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2025, the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, Version 16. The analysis distinguishes observed discrimination reporting from statistically standardized discrimination measures that account for differences in national income per capita and freedom of expression. Replication materials The accompanying archive provides computational materials and country-level results for examining the reported discrimination indicator (discr_any) and the corresponding statistical standardization. The analysis includes: Country-level estimates of reported and standardized discrimination. A fractional-logit specification relating discrimination reporting to purchasing-power-adjusted GDP per capita and freedom of expression. Alternative model specifications and population-weighting procedures. Sensitivity analyses examining the influence of individual countries. Documentation supporting the interpretation and reproducibility of the empirical results. Principal findings The analysis covers 136 countries and territories with complete information on the principal variables. The population-weighted reported discrimination rate for the matched sample is approximately 24.10%, compared with 24.34% after statistical standardization. Freedom of expression is positively associated with reported discrimination in the principal specifications. The estimated association with national income is sensitive to the weighting procedure. Although the aggregate discrimination estimate changes relatively little after standardization, individual country estimates can change substantially. These findings demonstrate the importance of distinguishing reported discrimination from underlying discriminatory experiences. Statistical standardization improves the analysis of reporting conditions but does not identify the true incidence of discrimination. Methodological qualifications The analysis is observational and cross-sectional. Its regression estimates should not be interpreted as causal effects. Country-level standardized discrimination measures are model-dependent transformations of observed survey responses, not direct estimates of unreported discrimination. The World Risk Poll, World Development Indicators, and V-Dem datasets remain subject to their respective methodological documentation and licensing conditions. Data availability The original data sources are: Lloyd’s Register Foundation, World Risk Poll 2025. World Bank, World Development Indicators. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, Version 16. The archive is intended to be used together with the original source datasets, subject to their access and licensing requirements. Related research This package complements The Economics of Belonging: Measuring Economic and Social Achievement Across Nations, whose principal database and replication materials are available at DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23603825. Author Carlos Federico Obregon Diaz