Culture: An Empirical Investigation of Beliefs, Work, and Fertility

Abstract

We study the e¤ect of culture on important economic outcomes by using the 1970 Census to examine the work and fertility behavior of women 30-40 years old, born in the U.S., but whose parents were born elsewhere. We use past female labor force participation and total fertility rates from the country of ancestry as our cultural proxies. These variables should capture, in addition to past economic and institutional conditions, the beliefs commonly held about the role of women in society, i.e. culture. Given the di¤erent time and place, only the beliefs embodied in the cultural proxies should be potentially relevant to women's behavior in the US in 1970. We show that these cultural proxies have positive and signi…cant explanatory power for individual work and fertility outcomes, even after controlling for possible indirect e¤ects of culture (e.g., education and spousal characteristics). We examine alternative hypotheses for these positive correlations and show that neither unobserved human capital nor networks are likely to be responsible. We also show that the e¤ect of these cultural proxies is ampli…ed the greater is the tendency for ethnic groups to cluster in the same neighborhoods. JEL Nos.: J13, J21, Z10.

Revisiting native and immigrant entrepreneurial activity

“…As a consequence, epidemiological approaches run the risk of producing insignificant results for culture, and they do usually not allow us to draw causal inference about the relationship of interest. Analyzing the behavior of second-generation immigrants has become a common approach to mitigating problems of selection and omitted variables (see Fernández and Fogli 2009;Giuliano 2007;Giuliano 2010, 2011), although this approach may attenuate the role of country of origin effects even further.…”

“…But while previous work has focused on reasons for differences in selfemployment among immigrant groups in the new environment, determinants of differences in selfemployment across immigrant groups may also be related to the country of origin. The idea underlying this approach is that immigrants arrive in the new environment with certain cultural and economic endowments (see Fernández 2008;Fernández and Fogli 2009). We hypothesize that self-employment in the country of origin may affect the selfemployment choice in the country of immigration.…”

Civic Capital as the Missing Link

“…by Carroll et. al (1999), GSZ (2004), Giuliano (2007), Ichino and Maggi (2000), and Fernandez and Fogli (2009). 12 11 For instance, GSZ (2008) address this issue by controlling for the most likely type of asset (besides social capital) that free cities created and that still generates income: historical attractions and arts that result in a richer tourist industry in the city, captured by the number of annual visitors to the city (scaled by population).…”

Improving Employees Behavior through Extension in Theory of Planned Behavior: A Theoretical Perspective for SMEs

“…Apparently, religion has proved to exert a huge effect on individuals' behavior. A wide-ranging literature shows that religion and religiosity -as well as other cultural traits -matter to important economic phenomena, such as: educational attainments (Cohen-Zada, 2005;Fan, 2008); labor force participation (Fernandez and Fogli, 2009); marriage and inter-faith marriage (Bisin, 2004); fertility (Neuman, 2007) income and financial assets (Keister, 2003). Religion has also shown connection with social interactions (subjective norms) and attitudes (Flanagan, 1991;Barry, 1996;Brooks, 2003).…”