In recent decades it seems that various factors have led to a cultural background change, which although mainly characterized as incremental, in some cases can be sudden. A question therefore arises as to whether the way in which the cultural background has evolved during last decades affects the growth rate of economies. We use an unbalanced panel dataset comprised from 34 OECD countries from 1981 to 2019, and a Least Squares Dummy Variable Correction (LSDVC) method as well as a series of robustness tests including different methods of analysis, adding control variables and breaking the overall period into subperiods. We conclude that the cultural background during the overall period under consideration is characterized as post-materialistic and harms economic growth. Moreover, we highlight both theoretically and empirically the cultural backlash hypothesis since the cultural background of the countries under analysis presents a shift from traditional/materialistic (from 1981 up to 1998) to post-materialist values (from 1999 up to 2019). Doing so, we conclude on a positive effect of cultural background on economic growth when traditional / materialistic values prevail, and a negative effect when post-materialistic values prevail. These results highlight culture as a crucial factor for economic growth and indicate that economic policy makers should take it seriously into account before designing economic policy and in order to explain the effectiveness of economic policies implemented.

近几十年来，似乎各种因素导致了文化背景的变化，尽管主要表现为渐进式的变化，但在某些情况下可能是突然的。因此，出现了一个问题，即过去几十年文化背景的演变方式是否会影响经济增长率。我们使用由 1981 年至 2019 年 34 个经合组织国家组成的非平衡面板数据集、最小二乘虚拟变量校正 (LSDVC) 方法以及一系列稳健性测试，包括不同的分析方法、添加控制变量和将整个时期分解为亚时期。我们得出的结论是，所考虑的整个时期的文化背景具有后物质主义的特征，并且损害了经济增长。而且，我们在理论和经验上都强调了文化反弹假设，因为被分析国家的文化背景呈现出从传统/物质主义（从 1981 年到 1998 年）到后物质主义价值观（从 1999 年到 2019 年）的转变。这样做，我们得出结论，当传统/唯物主义价值观盛行时，文化背景对经济增长的积极影响，以及后物质主义价值观盛行时的负面影响。这些结果突出了文化作为经济增长的关键因素，并表明经济政策制定者在设计经济政策之前应该认真考虑它，以解释所实施经济政策的有效性。