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Question: How important is having ambition for getting ahead in life?
Choices: "Essential" "Very important" "Fairly important" "Not very important" "Not important at all"
Data: % of "Essential" "Very important"
Period:
Area:
30 countries/ areas
Highlight:
1 Poland92.3%
2 United States91.3%
3 Iceland89.7%
4 Norway87.4%
5 Sweden84.0%
6 Israel83.1%
7 New Zealand82.9%
8 Australia81.2%
9 Germany79.1%
10 Hungary76.5%
11 Slovakia74.9%
12 Slovenia73.2%
13 Austria72.4%
14 United Kingdom72.0%
15 Portugal71.0%
16 Republic of Korea70.8%
17 Czech Republic67.7%
18 Denmark64.8%
19 Italy62.7%
20 Switzerland61.2%
21 France59.9%
22 Turkiye59.2%
23 Lithuania58.2%
24 Chile57.9%
25 Spain57.6%
26 Belgium57.2%
27 Latvia56.5%
28 Finland49.3%
29 Estonia46.6%
30 Japan 41.8%

Note
Can't choose/ No answer are excluded. Belgium: unweighted sum of Flanders and Wallony. Germany: unweighted sum of West and East Germany. United Kingdom: excluding Northern Ireland.

No data for 8 countries.

Source
ISSP 2009

Correlations with major national performance indices
Life satisfaction (10 steps)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 1.508266 X +5.672
Correlation coefficient (r)0.310
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.096

GDP per capita (current US$)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 50739.969522 X +7735.496
Correlation coefficient (r)0.319
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.102

Life expectancy at birth - Both sexes (years)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = -0.051665 X +80.536
Correlation coefficient (r)-0.003
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.000

Fertility rate, total (births per woman)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = 0.501791 X +1.223
Correlation coefficient (r)0.210
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.044

Suicide - all ages (per 100,000 population)
No. of data30
Regression equation
Y = -5.244090 X +17.140
Correlation coefficient (r)-0.130
Coefficient of determination (R2)0.017