Dataset of the article "Economic Insecurity, Work Ethic, and Tax Morale: Cross-Country Evidence on the Role of Uncertainty Avoidance" submitted to Journal of Behavioral And Experimental Economics
Description
The dataset combines individual-level data from Wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey with the country-level Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI), merged by country, yielding 62,491 respondents nested in 49 countries and territories; UAI is constant within countries. Tax morale (TM) is measured by WVS Q180 (justifiability of cheating on taxes, 10-point scale), reverse-coded so higher scores indicate higher tax morale. Economic insecurity (EI) is a five-indicator latent construct combining material deprivation (WVS Q51, Q53, Q54, Q55: going without food, needed medicine/treatment, cash income, and safe shelter in the past 12 months; 4-point scales) and job-insecurity concern (WVS Q142; 4-point), all reverse-coded so higher scores indicate greater insecurity. Work ethic (WE) is a three-indicator latent construct based on WVS Q39–Q41 (people who don’t work turn lazy; work is a duty towards society; work should always come first; 5-point scales), reverse-coded so higher scores indicate stronger work ethic. Individual-level controls are gender, age, education (ISCED, 9-category ordinal), employment status (8 categories, entered as seven dummies with full-time employment as reference), and household income level (10-step ordinal recoded as low [1–3], middle [4–7], high [8–10], entered as two dummies with low income as reference)