Richard Florida, author of Rise of the Creative Class, professor and all-around smart guy, is living in Toronto now. His blog is mirrored on the Globe and Mail’s website, and given his local focus I’ve subscribed to the feed. I find most of what he posts about very interesting; he describes his specialty areas as “economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation” so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Over the weekend he posted a graph that he’d found on Andrew Sullivan’s site, who found it in a Pew Research paper. I’ve posted it here:

While it doesn’t surprise me, it does illustrate the data nicely. Put simply, it indicates that the more religious a country, the less wealthy it tends to be. You could argue about which is the chicken and which is the egg in that correlation, but the trend is there. Canada’s easy to spot; the two North American countries are represented in navy blue and the US is labeled. Canada’s practically on top of the trend line.

Actually, the US is one of the two very interesting outliers: it’s the most wealthy nation, but is way off the trend line. Kuwait is the other: more wealthy than most of its middle eastern neighbours, but near the very top of the religion axis. Of course, that aberration can be explained by the fluke presence of oil; the US is a more complicated riddle.

Lots of other fascinating data in that report; give it a read if you have a chance.

.:.

More interesting articles that showed up in my feeds today:

• 400 people die in Toronto every year from car pollution;
• Wes Anderson isn’t so good anymore;
• Malcolm Gladwell is blogging again, about serial killer profiling.

[tags]richard florida, pew research, toronto pollution, wes anderson, malcolm gladwell[/tags]