Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture

Talhelm, Thomas; Zhang, Xiaoling; Oishi, Shigehiro; Shi-min, Cheng; Duan, Dechao; Lan, Xuezhao; Kitayama, Shinobu

doi:10.1126/science.1246850

Cited by 973 publications

(883 citation statements)

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“…Rice is the major staple food of the residents in Southern China, which has more rainfall than other regions in the country (Ren, 1999). It is the reality of China, not only for the past, but also at present (Talhelm et al, 2014). Moreover, Southern China has been the economic and demographic center of China since the Song Dynasty.…”

Section: Epidemics Climate Change and Economic Well-being In Ming Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Epidemics in Ming and Qing China: Impacts of changes of climate and economic well-being

Pei

Zhang

et al. 2015

Social Science & Medicine

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a b s t r a c tWe investigated the mechanism of epidemics with the impacts of climate change and socio-economic fluctuations in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China (AD 1368e1901). Using long-term and highquality datasets, this study is the first quantitative research that verifies the 'climate change / economy / epidemics' mechanism in historical China by statistical methods that include correlation analysis, Granger causality analysis, ARX, and Poisson-ARX modeling. The analysis provides the evidences that climate change could only fundamentally lead to the epidemics spread and occurrence, but the depressed economic well-being is the direct trigger of epidemics spread and occurrence at the national and long term scale in historical China. Moreover, statistical modeling shows that economic well-being is more important than population pressure in the mechanism of epidemics. However, population pressure remains a key element in determining the social vulnerability of the epidemics occurrence under climate change. Notably, the findings not only support adaptation theories but also enhance our confidence to address climatic shocks if economic buffering capacity can be promoted steadily. The findings can be a basis for scientists and policymakers in addressing global and regional environmental changes.

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Section: Epidemics Climate Change and Economic Well-being In Ming Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Epidemics in Ming and Qing China: Impacts of changes of climate and economic well-being

Pei

Zhang

et al. 2015

Social Science & Medicine

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“…Third, the population in the South has many immigrants from the Yangtze River in China splits the wheat-growing north from the rice-growing south. Talhelm et al (2014) point out the percentage of cultivated land devoted to rice paddies is more than 50 percent in each province in the rice-growing south (below the Yangtze River). In a follow up study using incentivized experiments, Zhou (2017) finds greater cooperation among students from the Southern provinces of Hunan and Zhejiang than from students of the Northern provinces of Hebei and Shandong.…”

Section: Lineage Network In Rural Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As shown in Figure 1, the darker shade denotes Southern provinces which include ten provinces are classified as being in the South, while the lighter shade denote twelve Northern provinces. 9 To better focus on the lineage culture, we exclude minority ethnic groups from our sample, since they are historically herding areas and have different languages, cultures and religions (Talhelm et al, 2014). …”

Section: Data and Descriptive Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As explained in the previous section, the lineage culture is more developed in the South than in the North. To investigate how this cultural difference affects the results, we adopt the grouping strategy of Talhelm et al (2014) and use the Yangtze River as the South-North divide to separate the 22 provinces into two groups: Southern provinces and Northern provinces. As shown in Figure 1, the darker shade denotes Southern provinces which include ten provinces are classified as being in the South, while the lighter shade denote twelve Northern provinces.…”

Section: Data and Descriptive Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lineage-based heterogeneity and cooperative behavior in rural China

Pan²,

Sarangi

2018

Journal of Comparative Economics

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This paper investigates how lineages, the commonly found organizations in rural villages of China, affect people's intra-and cross-lineage cooperative behavior. We use data from the Chinese Household Income Project Survey 2002, which exclusively contains information about the lineage structure in these villages allowing us to classify three levels of lineage-based heterogeneity. Our identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of lineage-based heterogeneity. We find evidence that people in a village with higher lineage-based heterogeneity are less likely to exhibit reciprocity behavior within lineages or contribute to the provision of public goods that are jointly shared across lineages. The estimation results remain robust to the inclusion of various control variables and additional background characteristics. Finally, we examine a number of other economic outcomes and find that more homogenous villages do better than other types of villages.JEL classification: D71; O12; O17; H41 Keywords: Cooperation; Lineage Networks; Reciprocity; Local Public Goods; China 1 We are grateful to R. Carter Hill for several suggestions. We are thankful to the editor Daniel Berkowitz and two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions. We also thank

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“…(Nisbett and Cohen, 1996;Alesina and La Ferrara, 2000;Talhelm et al, 2014). 2 For example, it has long been appreciated that some religious groups have more individualistic values, whereas others are more collectivist (Durkheim, 1951;Davis and Robinson, 2012 Kopstein and Wittenberg (2011);Peisakhin (2015); Pop-Eleches (2007); Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker (2011);Shefter (1977Shefter ( , 1994; Wittenberg (2006;.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural legacies and political preferences: the failure of separatism in the Swiss Jura

Siroky

Mueller

Hechter

2015

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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The study of secession generally stresses the causal influence of cultural identities, political preferences or ecological factors. Whereas these different views are often considered to be mutually exclusive, this paper proposes a two-stage model in which they are complementary. We posit that cultural identities matter for explaining secessionism, but not because of primordial attachments.Rather, religious and linguistic groups matter because their members are imbued with cultural legacies that lead to distinct political preferences over welfare statism. Further, ecological constraints such as geography and topography affect social interaction with like-minded individuals. On the basis of both these political preferences and ecological constraints, individuals then make rational choices about the desirability of secession. Instrumental considerations are therefore crucial in explaining the decision to secede, but not in a conventional pocketbook manner. To examine this theory, we analyze the 2013 referendum on the secession of the Jura Bernois region from the canton of Berne in Switzerland, using municipal level census and referendum data. The results lend support to the theory and suggest one way in which the politics of identity, based on factors like language and religion, can be fused with the politics of interest (preferences for more or less state intervention into the polity and economy) to better understand group behavior.Keywords: Secession, referendum, welfare statism, cultural identities, ecological constraints, rational choice 2 Secession is a phenomenon that affects both the developing countries (e.g., Georgia, China, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria) as well as developed ones (e.g., Spain, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy; Dion, 1996;Sorens, 2012). In several European democracies, like the United Kingdom and Spain (Muñoz and Guinjoan, 2013;Muñoz and Tormos, 2014), secessionist demands are accompanied by calls for a referendum to decide the question once and for all. In others, such as France, Belgium, and Italy, secession is at least sporadically invoked in political discourse when demanding more territorial group rights or fewer payments to poorer areas (Lindsey, 2012;Coppieters and Huysseune, 2002).Despite these developments in European politics, scholars continue to disagree over the relative importance of different mechanisms for understanding secession. Some argue that cultural factors, such as emotions, affect, and social identity, are key to explaining nationalism and separatism (e.g. Smith, 1986;Connor, 1994;Petersen, 2002), whereas others think that they can best be understood in terms of rational action (e.g. Buchanan and Faith, 1987;Wittman, 1991;Bolton and Roland, 1997;Bookman, 1992;Collier and Hoeffler, 2002;Sorens, 2012). Still others emphasize structural constraints on individual decision-making through geographically constrained social networks (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967;Jenkins, 1986;Rutherford et al., 2014). Thus whereas some scholars see secession as largely a matter of the he...

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Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture

Cited by 973 publications

References 34 publications

Epidemics in Ming and Qing China: Impacts of changes of climate and economic well-being

Epidemics in Ming and Qing China: Impacts of changes of climate and economic well-being

Lineage-based heterogeneity and cooperative behavior in rural China

Cultural legacies and political preferences: the failure of separatism in the Swiss Jura

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