The Mission: Human Capital Transmission, Economic Persistence, and Culture in South America*

Caicedo, Felipe Valencia

doi:10.1093/qje/qjy024

Cited by 181 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Comparing Protestant and Catholic missionaries, he nds that Protestant missionaries who focused more on the female population had important eects on female education, while Catholic missionaries aected primarily male education. The present study complements other studies on the long-run eects of missionaries that nd overwhelmingly positive eects (Woodberry, 2004;Gallego and Woodberry, 2010;Nunn, 2010;Akcomak et al (2015); Bai and Kung, 2015;Valencia Caicedo, 2014).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 83%

The long-run effects of missionary orders in Mexico

Waldinger

2017

Journal of Development Economics

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This paper examines the long-run eects of dierent Catholic missionary orders in colonial Mexico on educational outcomes and Catholicism. The main missionary orders in colonial Mexico were all Catholic, but they belonged to dierent monastic traditions and adhered to dierent values. Mendicant orders were committed to poverty and sought to reduce social inequality in colonial Mexico by educating the native population. The Jesuit order, by contrast, focused educational eorts on the colony's elite in the city centers, rather than on the native population in rural mission areas. Using a newly constructed data set of the locations of 1,145 missions in colonial Mexico, I test whether long-run development outcomes dier among areas that had Mendicant missions, Jesuit missions, or no missions. Results indicate that areas with historical Mendicant missions have higher present-day literacy rates, and higher rates of educational attainment at primary, secondary and postsecondary levels than regions without a mission. Results show that the share of Catholics is higher in regions where Catholic missions of any kind were a historical present. Additional results suggest that missionaries may have aected long-term development by impacting people's access to and valuation of education. seminar participants at LSE and participants of the Advanced Graduate Workshop at the University of Manchester for very helpful feedback and suggestions. I gratefully acknowledge nancial support from Cusanuswerk.1 When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in America in 1492, Catholic missionary orders accompanied them in order to convert the native population to the Christian faith. In colonial Mexico, the Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, and Jesuit orders were the main missionary orders. All part of the Roman Catholic Church, they were similar in many respects, such as organizational structure.1 They belonged, however, to dierent monastic traditions, and obeyed dierent sets of rules. The Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian orders followed the Mendicant tradition, Church. Jesuits endorsed economic wealth and inuence as valuable means to this end. In colonial Mexico, they established a close connection [with] the criollo 2 elite[that] rested on the order's educational contributions (MacLachlan, 1980: 137).They strengthened the position of the Catholic elite in the colony, and contributed to the strong position of the Catholic Church in the country. Social inequality, they felt, was justiable because the Spanish were the instrument chosen by God to incorporate the Indies into Christian society through subjecting their inhabitants to Spanish dominion (Liss, 1973:458). This paper compares educational and cultural outcomes today in areas that had 1 All orders were answerable to the pope and their rules had to be approved by the pope.The orders were all trans-national organizations that were organized in provinces and consisted of celibate, highly educated men.2 The term criollo comprised people born in Hispanic America of European ancestry.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 83%

The long-run effects of missionary orders in Mexico

Waldinger

2017

Journal of Development Economics

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“…A similar influence has been documented for 18 th century Jesuit missions among indigenous populations on educational attainment in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil 45 . The Protestant heritage of the United States may likewise help to explain the value Americans' place on religious traditionalism, individualism, and moralization of work (often referred to as the "Protestant work ethic") 46 .…”

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confidence: 75%

Cultural similarity among co-religionists within and between countries

White¹,

Muthukrishna²,

Norenzayan³

2020

Preprint

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Cultural evolutionary theories suggest that world religions have contributed to the expansion of human cooperation, in part by consolidating beliefs, values, and practices within a culturally integrated super-ethnic identity. To test this hypothesis, we measured cultural distance between religious groups within and between countries, using the Cultural Fixation Index (CF_ST) applied to the World Values Survey (88 countries, N=243,118). We found cultural similarity between co-religionists within and across countries: Individuals who shared a religious denomination and level of religiosity were more culturally similar than those with different affiliations and levels of religiosity, even after excluding overtly religious values. Moreover, distances between denominations echoed shared historical descent (e.g., Christian denominations were culturally similar). Non-religious individuals across countries also shared cultural values, suggesting the cultural evolution of secularization. Together, results reveal the pervasive cultural signature of religion and support the role of world religions in sustaining superordinate identities that transcend geographical boundaries.

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“…(), Satyanath et al . (), Valencia Caicedo ()) but also in other fields (Luskin, ; Nakagawa and Cuthill, ; Gelman, ). The coefficients of a “standardized regression” are commonly referred to as “standardized beta coefficients.”…”

Section: A Review Of Existing Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the Stars

Sterck

2019

Journal of Economic Surveys

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It is frequent to hear in economic seminars or read in academic papers that an effect is economically significant or economically important. Yet, the economic literature is vague on what economic importance means and how it should be measured. In this paper, I show that existing measures of economic importance are flawed and misused. I derive a new metric that measures, in percentage terms, the contribution of each explanatory variable to deviations in the dependent variable, ceteris paribus. As an illustration, the method is applied to study the determinants of migration and the determinants of fertility.

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The Mission: Human Capital Transmission, Economic Persistence, and Culture in South America*

Cited by 181 publications

References 87 publications

The long-run effects of missionary orders in Mexico

The long-run effects of missionary orders in Mexico

Cultural similarity among co-religionists within and between countries

Beyond the Stars

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