Value change in Latin American countries: comparing the indexes of post-materialism and emancipatory values

Abstract

Since the identification of the phenomenon of post-materialism by Ronald Inglehart in the early seventies, the process of measuring values has passed by constant updating and methodological revisions. Recently Christian Welzel proposed a revision of the theory of value change, creating a new measure for phenomenon: the emancipative values index. The aim of this paper is to test the applicability of this measure in the context of some Latin American countries, comparing it with Inglehart's post-materialism index. Using data from the World Values Survey project, we compare both measures using two scaling and dimension reduction criteria: formative and reflective approach. The results obtained identify a greater reliability of the emancipative value index and attests its applicability in the context of Latin America.

Keywords:
political culture; values; post-materialism; emancipative values.