I wonder if it's related to the nature of the societal safety net.
Here's a somewhat strained comparison: a few years ago I listened to a podcast featuring Juan Pablo Villarino [1], who's hitchhiked through nearly 100 countries. If I remember correctly, his observation was that the hardest place to hitchhike was northern Europe, and that by comparison poor and even war-torn places were quite easy. The suggested explanation was that in northern Europe, the expectation is that if you are hitchhiking and relying on strangers, then you've done something weird to fall outside of the normal run of things, and you must be a weirdo. By contrast, in more chaotic places it's more plausible that you have just fallen through some cracks that anyone could fall through, and it's perfectly reasonable to need a lift (or a meal, or some other helping hand).
Here's a somewhat strained comparison: a few years ago I listened to a podcast featuring Juan Pablo Villarino [1], who's hitchhiked through nearly 100 countries. If I remember correctly, his observation was that the hardest place to hitchhike was northern Europe, and that by comparison poor and even war-torn places were quite easy. The suggested explanation was that in northern Europe, the expectation is that if you are hitchhiking and relying on strangers, then you've done something weird to fall outside of the normal run of things, and you must be a weirdo. By contrast, in more chaotic places it's more plausible that you have just fallen through some cracks that anyone could fall through, and it's perfectly reasonable to need a lift (or a meal, or some other helping hand).
[1] https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-juan...