Consumption linked to women's empowerment
Comparing Women's political empowerment index vs. electoral democracy index with Final consumption expenditure (constant 2015 US$), per capita across 152 countries, 2025–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.59
- Holding size constant
- +0.44
- Countries compared
- 152
- Period
- 2025–2025
What might link these
A possible link between final consumption expenditure and women's political empowerment could be through education and economic independence. However, a careful reader should be cautious about assuming causation and consider likely confounders such as education levels. Education could be driving both increased consumption and empowerment.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. This correlation could mislead by implying a direct causal relationship between consumption and empowerment, when in fact other factors like education may be driving the observed association.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.