Abstract
Background
Arts and cultural engagement is a ubiquitous human behavior and considered to be evolutionarily and developmentally adaptive, with wide-ranging health benefits. Although levels of engagement are known to be far from equal within countries, comprehensive data comparing the rates and profiles of engagement on a global scale are lacking.
Methods
This study analyzed cross-sectional data from Wave 7 of the World Values Survey (2017–2023), with 73,825 respondents from 51 countries. Using multilevel logistic regression, we tested whether a set of individual-level demographic and socio-economic factors and country-level socio-demographic and political factors were associated with arts, music, or educational organization membership rates. We additionally explored whether those individual-level factors differed across regions using single-level regression.
Results
Prevalence of arts organization membership varies substantially across countries, from fewer than 1 in 30 people living in Egypt to more than 1 in 2 people living in Kenya. Education, income, and age are consistently identified individual-level factors contributing to membership disparities, alongside other region-specific individual-level factors such as gender and employment status. Membership is also positively influenced by country-level income inequality and net migration rate.
Conclusions
We found a universal social gradient in membership, which suggests differential opportunities and potential barriers to access arts organizations across population subgroups. Given that participation in arts organizations has been shown to improve health outcomes, reducing disparities in access to and participation in the arts may have the potential to help reduce health inequalities and should therefore be a priority in global health.
DOI: 10.1186/s44263-025-00187-1