Italy and Spain covered more ground overthe prior 20years, with much greater positive changes, to simply reach the high levels already established in Denmark and Finland. Countries are categorized as having strong caring spirits if their non-income HDI increase is greater than one half of one standard deviation above its predicted value and weak caring spirits if their non-income HDI change is greater than one half of one standard deviation below its predicted value. The typical pathway in these sorts of models is through net exports: higher wages are associated with a loss of international competitiveness and an increase in the relative affordability of imports.