January 31, 2004
EVANGELIZE EUROPE:
Research Around the World Links Religion to Economic Development (FELICIA R. LEE, 1/31/04, NY Times)
Forget investment and savings rates, worker productivity and wage scales to determine which countries will become richer or poorer. What really stimulates economic growth is whether you believe in an afterlife — especially hell.At least that's what two Harvard scholars have found after analyzing data collected in 59 countries between 1981 and 1999.
"Our central perspective is that religion affects economic outcomes mainly by fostering religious beliefs that influence individual traits such as honesty, work ethic, thrift and openness to strangers," the researchers, Robert J. Barro and Rachel M. McCleary, wrote in a recent issue of American Sociological Review. (They also happen to be married.) "For example, beliefs in heaven and hell might affect those traits by creating perceived rewards and punishments that relate to `good' and `bad' lifetime behavior." [...]
[O]ver the last 30 years, many East Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, have experienced both rapid economic growth and the spread of Christianity, Mr. Barro said.
"South Korea is a good example of that rapid growth and more religion," he said. There the number of converts from Confucianism and other Eastern religions to Christianity is growing rapidly, he explained. [...]
"I find that belief factors play a major role in economic growth, but here is one of the world's leading economists saying so," Mr. Inglehart said, referring to Mr. Barro. "When Weber argued that big breakthroughs in economic growth were in Protestant countries, it was at a time when many cultures were shaped by Protestant institutions. His notion in the broadest sense is that belief factors play a role in economic factors."
"This is a revised view of the Protestant ethic," he continued. He noted that many mostly Protestant, wealthy countries were now more interested in quality of life, and that many Eastern countries were now more focused on economic growth — with some populations even converting, as Mr. Barro noted, to Christianity and specifically to Protestantism.
"Confucian countries are now the most Protestant countries on earth, in terms of a moral imperative to work hard, save money, to do well," Mr. Inglehart said.
The future lies not in the West--where, excluding the U.S., Christianity is dying-- but where Christianity is growing.
Note that this fact is the dog not barking in another story from today's Times, On the Dark Side of Democracy
By EMILY EAKIN, 1/31/04, NY Times)
To most Americans, the notion that free markets and democracy are essential to curing the world's ills is an article of faith. If only Iraq and Afghanistan, Cuba and North Korea, Syria and Rwanda would adopt both, their people, not to mention the world, would be safer and richer.
Yet to Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, such accepted wisdom is mostly evidence of a persistent and disturbing national naïveté. All too often, she says, bringing free markets and elections to developing nations leads not to stability or prosperity but to hate-mongering, discrimination and even genocidal violence.
The idea that political and economic liberty could trigger such atrocities is heretical to many Western liberals. That, Ms. Chua says, is because people here are blind to ethnicity. [...]
[C]ritics complain, America's approach is both precipitous and simplistic, encouraging political liberalization in nations that may not have the social and economic conditions necessary to sustain it. "We're not prepared to understand, assess and respond to the complexities of other societies," said the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, who has served as an adviser to governments in Russia, Poland and Bolivia.
Mr. Stiglitz agreed, saying that democracy experts tend to ignore social variables like ethnicity and gender. In Malaysia, for example, he said, the local government created a successful affirmative action program to benefit the indigenous Malay majority — and ward off ethnic conflict with the prosperous Chinese minority — over the objections of Western advisers. And in Rwanda, he said, the transition from customary to formal law put land formerly controlled by women under male ownership, an outcome Western experts failed to anticipate.
Most critics are quick to stress that they are not against democracy, free markets or globalization per se; they merely object to the way these ideals have typically been pursued. "I'm an optimist," Ms. Chua said, summing up her position. "In the last 20 years, we have done things in many ways so badly, so foolishly, often with the best of intentions — like dropping a stock exchange in Mozambique or xeroxing copies of the U.S. Constitution. I think we can do better."
In her book, she argues that one way to reduce inequality and ethnic tension in democratizing nations is for market-dominant minorities to share some of their wealth by making "significant, visible contributions to the local economies in which they are thriving," by which she means building universities, hospitals or recreational facilities, supporting local schools and employing members of the indigenous majority in their companies.
They don't need money--they need missionaries.
MORE:
-World Values Survey (Prof. Ronald Inglehart, University of Michigan)
-ESSAY: American values: Living with a superpower: Some values are held in common by America and its allies. As three studies show, many others are not (The Economist, Jan 2nd 2003)
-Professor Robert J. Barro's Working Papers On The Web
Sure, that would explain the wealth of Spain and Italy, which did not begin their economic growth until they shook off the shackles of Catholicism and became militantly secular.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 31, 2004 01:42 PMFranco was hardly secular.
Posted by: oj at January 31, 2004 01:51 PMDoes Christianity precede or follow along with economic growth? Is Christianity the majority religion in the fast growing Asian economies? I would think not, which means that it was not the coming of Christianity that sparked the growth.
What it does show is that Protestantism is a wealth-friendly religion, and promotes behaviors which are conducive to individual wealth creation. People are inclined to keep their religious worldview in alignment with their secular worldview. Protestantism is an appealing religion for people who have already 'converted' to individual capitalism.
Catholicism, being a feudal religion, doesn't fare as well in fast growing economies. It is significant that evangelical Protestantism is a growing religion in Catolic Mexico and Central America.
Posted by: Robert D at January 31, 2004 04:36 PMRobert:
What's most interesting is that protestantism, capitalism, and democracy are all basically the same idea, just applied to religion, economics and politics, but all dependent on the moral bases that Judaism/Catholicism (the original orthodoxies) laid down. Now we see the countries of Western Europe drifting away from those bases and all three of those great innovations dying on the vine.
Posted by: oj at January 31, 2004 04:46 PMMay I direct you to this link.
Posted by: Ronnie at January 31, 2004 11:19 PMAnd Spain's economy was moribund until he died, Orrin. Do you know why spaghetti westerns were shot in Spain? Because everything there was really cheap (a factor of economic malaise) and because profits could not be repatriated to foreign investors and because there were no local investments to absorb capital.
Spanish economic expansion began under socialist governments, although they did not pursue policies greatly different from non-socialist European governments.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 1, 2004 02:33 PMYes and he established the conditions in which an economy could thrive, while those nations that tried communism remain largely moribund.
Posted by: oj at February 1, 2004 04:19 PMIreland was economically moribund until it shook off the shackles of Catholic fealty.
Now, far more secular than it has ever been, it is also far more successful.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 2, 2004 06:30 AMIt's actually more a function of colonialism ending, since it remains the most religious state in Europe--that's the difficulty though, maintaining a high enough degreee of religiosity to succeed without being so religious as to be retarded. If it follows the European pattern it too will be moribund within a decade or two.
Posted by: oj at February 2, 2004 08:54 AMColonialism had been over for nearly 100 years.
The only thing that changed in Ireland since the '70s and before was a significant reduction in the power of the clergy in Irish society.
Britain is less religious now than, say, 1979.
And the most dynamic economy in Europe, save for Ireland.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 3, 2004 02:22 PMAnd a mamnmoth reduction in societal violence that was a function of colonialism.
Posted by: oj at February 3, 2004 02:34 PM