Comparing countries

¿How can we compare the cultures of two countries? Geert Hofstede analized a database of IBM employees (IBM is present in over 70 countries) searching for differences among different countries.For each country, 5 features were extracted:

• Power distance index: the larger this number is, the larger the difference among classes. For instance Germany has a score of 35, while Chile has a score of 63 and Guatemala 95.
• Individualism: this measures the importance of an individual with respect to society. In a country like the US, for instance, the score is 91, while Germany has a score of 67 and China a score of 20.
• Masculinity: indicates the extent to which the values that are more stereotypical of men (material success, self-centering, power, strength, etc.) are more important than values associated to women (importance of relationships, quality of live, etc.). Japan has a score of 95, being the society more prototypically "masculine", while Sweden has a score of 5, being the society more prototypically "feminine" in the ranking.
• Aversion to uncertainty: this indicates how much a society avoids unstructured or uncertain situation. Greece in this regard has an index of 112, while in Singapur uncertainty is much less tolerated, with a score of 8.
• Orientation to long term: measures how important are persistence and tradition with respect to shorter-term values. In this regard China has an index of 118 and this is much larger in general in Asian countries. Norway has a score of 20. Unfortunately this index is available only for a few countries.
  

The official site of Geert Hofstede has a tool for comparing countries. For instance if we compare Chile and Spain, we see that Spain is more individualistic and more oriented toward masculine values than Chile.

The site ClearlyCultural.com has a series of world maps showing these scores. For instance this is the map showing the power distance index (redder = more unevenly distributed):