RCSSCI 220 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Social Cost
Document Summary
Why is so much of the world poor? - humphrey and exley. 3 main causes for patterns of extreme global poverty (less than 1. 25 per day) Traditional economic variables fail to account for all outcomes - this is where culture comes into play. Example: customary beliefs and practices passed down from generation to generation. Also possible to analyze culture as a set of societal constraints. Culture can function much in the way that institutions function. Technology may not be best adapted to tropical environments which would explain a possible thesis that poverty is most concentrated along the equator. Diamond theorizes that societies develop according to their environments. Ecological and geographic barriers prevent migration and diffusion. Continental barriers prevent tech diffusion and determine level of domestication. Example of institutional importance: european institutions 500 years ago incentivized growth in poor countries but hurt rich countries. Europeans also were more likely to settle and invest in less sense and increasingly poor areas.
