There are no meritocratic societies today, for meritocracy is dependent on a plurality of freedom a first country in the world has yet to deploy. The answer is yes, keeping in mind a rat-race for wealth and higher living standards is no measure of economic integrity or comparison. The strength of human renewability is, regardless of wealth.
Hence the rat race of wealth is incompatible with the renewability of human evolution and will meet its evolutionary ceiling — the effect of bumping into it we see everywhere around us.
Conversely, a meritocracy can only exist when it is subjugated to the freedom of freedom. A plurality of freedom any country in the world has yet to deploy by the systems it operates. For we build convulsing systems of stale absolutism, throwing up whatever merit it has not been pre-programmed for.
So today, the established rat race for wealth yields better short-term outcomes than the long of a make-believe meritocracy as both are incompatible with human evolution.
Once a meritocracy is subjugated to real freedom the renewability of a meritocracy will be in sync with the dynamic wherewithal of the participants driving it.