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Are the British genetically capitalist?
Greg Clark is one of my favorite economists, but I am not convinced by his latest paper. Here is the abstract:
Before 1800 all societies, including England, were Malthusian. The average man or woman had 2 surviving children. Such societies were also Darwinian. Some reproductively successful groups produced more than 2 surviving children, increasing their share of the population, while other groups produced less, so that their share declined. But unusually in England, this selection for men was based on economic success from at least 1250, not success in violence as in some other pre-industrial societies. The richest male testators left twice as many children as the poorest. Consequently the modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the middle ages. At the same time, from 1150 to 1800 in England there are clear signs of changes in average economic preferences towards more "capitalist” attitudes. The highly capitalistic nature of English society by 1800 – individualism, low time preference rates, long work hours, high levels of human capital – may thus stem from the nature of the Darwinian struggle in a very stable agrarian society in the long run up to the Industrial Revolution. The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality.
There is considerable evidence that commercially successful Englishmen had more kids than average, starting in medieval times. There is much less comparative evidence about other societies; do see pp.31-2, 55-7, but his best example concerns one Amazon tribe, where the warlike reproduced with greater frequency.
Of course the commercial revolution and then the so-called industrial revolution came out of England, not Germany or Italy. If it could be shown that the English family pattern stood out with regard to the rest of Europe, I would see greater heft in the idea. The Yanamamo differ in too many other regards for this comparison to illuminate any possible role for genetics in the European economic take-off. If family patterns can make the crucial difference, let's keep as many other factors constant as possible. Otherwise I'm back to thinking it is institutions (most of all for science) and peer effects, not genetics, at the relevant margin of take-off. Did commercially active Germans and Italians, during the Renaissance, really fail to propagate their seed?
Addendum: See also the work of Oded Galor.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 13, 2007 at 07:14 AM in History | Permalink
Comments
I regard this idea of Clark's as a brilliant hypotheses - which deserves considerable further investigation.
But I think he is arguing that the English *middle* class out-reproduced both the peasants (who dies of starvation and disease) and the aristocrats (who were killed in wars and the like).
It was middle class personalities that were inherited (peaceful, hard working, deferred satisfaction etc) and not the warrior or peasant ethos.
Posted by: Bruce G Charlton at Feb 13, 2007 7:47:48 AM
Before 1800 all societies, including England, were Malthusian. The average man or woman had 2 surviving children.
This begins with an untruth. Many preindustrial societies did not feature steady-state populations, but rather went through periods of population increase and population decline lasting several generations.
Posted by: Cyrus at Feb 13, 2007 8:01:26 AM
This gels with Britain not having been at war or used force for the last couple of centuries.
Posted by: theCoach at Feb 13, 2007 8:46:20 AM
You can show the wealthier outbreeding the poorer for a pretty long period of
time in Germany as well. But without additional information about class mobility,
different distribution of genes among rich and poor, and some sort of genetic
candidate for the hypothetical 'pro-capitalist' gene, the whole thing looks pretty
tenuous.
I do think a thrifty temperament is partially heritable though. But that's a
separate line of inquiry.
Posted by: bbartlog at Feb 13, 2007 8:57:26 AM
Sure its the institutions, but as institutions evolve they are going to effect the genetic equilibrium in a society. The English just happened upon a combination that let them break free of the Malthusian trap for the first time in human history. I think this makes sense as an explanation.
The problem with a comparison to other societies is that memetic evolution is pretty random. You could put a society on an island with any initial conditions you want; you will have no idea what the nature of that society will be in 500 years. Random cultural mutation, some of which are able to prepetuate themselves, this effects the genetic equilibrium which effects the cultural evolutions. You are already out on a branch of all of the possible worlds that will never converge with the other initially possible worlds.
Posted by: josh at Feb 13, 2007 9:14:04 AM
Again, the idea that any part of western Europe was in a Malthusian trap at any time between the black death and the industrial revolution is at best controversial.
Posted by: Cyrus at Feb 13, 2007 9:48:45 AM
Could the nuclear family and its rise in Britain have anything to do with it?
Posted by: ElamBend at Feb 13, 2007 9:51:07 AM
"Of course the commercial revolution and then the so-called industrial revolution came out of England, not Germany or Italy."
Actually, both revolutions began in the Dutch Republic. Check out "The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815" by Jan de Vries, "The Dutch Republic" by Jonathan Israel and "The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe" by Philip S. Gorski.
Posted by: Fundamentalist at Feb 13, 2007 9:58:45 AM
The Yanamoto
Umm, don't you mean the Yanomamo? I think you've somehow combined the Yanomamo Indians and the Yamato people (the ancestors of the Japanese).
Posted by: John Thacker at Feb 13, 2007 10:04:51 AM
Thanks, I've corrected that...
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Feb 13, 2007 10:15:18 AM
At the same time, from 1150 to 1800 in England there are clear signs of changes in average economic preferences towards more "capitalist” attitudes.
Contributing factor? Intelligence correlates with capitalist attitudes, and over the same time span there are some clues that the British were getting more intelligent:
"Dr Peter Rock, lead author of the study. . . suggests that the increase in [British cranial vault] size may be due to an increase in mental capacity over the ages."
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Feb 13, 2007 11:15:22 AM
Elizabeth Eisenstein in her book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
provided a look at effects of 'fixing' knowledge. The consequences were quite great ex -the science as we know it, appeared. But the effect was spread during time among different countries.
If we look at industrial revolution then the time difference of its occurrence in different countries is just negligible. It might be that more general patterns with uneven distributions played role.
so making Britains a special case is questionable.
Another point - in book IQ and global inequity (Lynn Vanhannen ) and some other publications on the net http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpdc/0507005.html it was shown that IQ is a determinant of growth ( so hight IQ people should be more business oriented ). But, for example, countries like Russia have a comparable IQ but quite different history and pattern of childbirths.
Also the previous reply has the pointers on the same issue.
But as there is no difference in IQs then it is hardly possible to say that Britains had special traits not correlated to IQ ( which is turn in inheritable).
Posted by: Sergey Kurdakov at Feb 13, 2007 12:18:23 PM
the idea that any part of western Europe was in a Malthusian trap at any time between the black death and the industrial revolution is at best controversial.
Not among economic historians it isn't. Look at Figure 1 and tell me you don't see a Malthusian trap.
Population fluctuations are to be expected as a response to various shocks to income (couple years of bad harvest), mortality (disease etc.) maybe fertility. Fact that they occur is no counter argument against Malthus. Add in a very slow but positive rate of technological progress and you have a slowly increasing population.
Slow/No Tech progress + Dimnishing Returns to Labor + Mortality falling with income = Malthusian Trap.
That's it.
Posted by: younotsneaky at Feb 13, 2007 12:39:18 PM
Why modern middle class capitalist individualist society emerged first in Northwestern Europe, with England in the lead, is one of the great questions in all history. One major chicken or egg question is which came first: did the English evolve the common law because they didn't want to have to rely on their extended family mafias for protection, or did they move to nuclear families because they had evolved the common law?
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 13, 2007 1:52:59 PM
Regarding the extinction of noble lines, Francis Galton advanced a good explanation of this back in 1865 (and then in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius). Nobles strongly tend to marry heiresses. Heiresses are signs of a family deficient in the production of sons. So they actively selected for the trait of poor fertility (at least in sons).
I believe it was Ferdinand Braudel who said of England that he could not find a time in which it was not essentially capitalist. Even if England did unusually select for economic success, it seems to still be a why were its institutions so different? question. A question which famously inspired MacFarlane's Origins of English Individualism, a great read.
I find Clark's work intriguing, but he seems to excessively underplay social complexity. Both in the sense that, even if one concedes the malthusian point about the bottom end, there is in all complex societies more going on elsewhere. And in the sense that the amount of land being cultivated was not a given. Thus, he claims that war (by killing people off) raises living standards temporarily. Not if production declines by as much or more it doesn't.
And he repeats the apparently unkillable nonsense about stirrups being necessary for shock cavalry to be effective, but I had my rant about that elsewhere.
Posted by: Lorenzo at Feb 13, 2007 2:00:26 PM
A rather lengthy historical fiction treatment of some of these same issues are in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy, especially the entrepreneurial advantages of the English and Dutch.
Posted by: Bruce Kratofil at Feb 13, 2007 2:07:50 PM
"Of course the commercial revolution and then the so-called industrial revolution came out of England, not Germany or Italy."
Didn't the Fabian Society and modern socialism also come out of England? (Granted, Marx and Engles were German, but so was the English monarchy.)
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Feb 13, 2007 2:26:49 PM
Cyrus,
If I understand it correctly, a malthusian trap does not imply a steady state population, but that increases in productive technology are offset by population growth and deminishing returns.
Posted by: josh at Feb 13, 2007 3:07:11 PM
Lorenzo:
I find Clark's work intriguing, but he seems to excessively underplay social complexity. Both in the sense that, even if one concedes the malthusian point about the bottom end, there is in all complex societies more going on elsewhere. And in the sense that the amount of land being cultivated was not a given. Thus, he claims that war (by killing people off) raises living standards temporarily.
Great point. In fact, the so-called "malthusian trap" is mostly a consequence of institutional factors such as detrimental land tenure policies (witness Hong Kong & South Korea vs. China, etc.) War *does* raise living standards for most people, but this is the result of falling land rents, it has nothing to do with Malthusian effects.
Posted by: guest at Feb 13, 2007 4:12:44 PM
Thus, he claims that war (by killing people off) raises living standards temporarily.
Actually in Malthusian economies some wars may raise living standards (semi)permanently. You can definetly see the Crusades as an effort to increase the mortality rate of Europeans, raising incomes back home. More generally it would depend on what kind of war are you talking about.
In fact, the so-called "malthusian trap" is mostly a consequence of institutional factors such as detrimental land tenure policies (witness Hong Kong & South Korea vs. China, etc.)
No. The Malthusian trap is a consequence of 1) Slow/nonexistant technology/productivity improvements, 2)Diminishing returns to labor, and 3)Fact that mortality falls with standard of living.
The way that institutional factors could come in is through 1). But while it is plausible to argue that broadly defined institutions such as "property rights" or "rule of law" may significantly affect the rate of productivity improvements (enough to change it from Malthusian arthimetric progress to modern geometric progress) if you're gonna say that the system of land tenure can do that you got some serious backing up to do.
I don't think anyone would consider Taiwan and SK "Malthusian". Probably not China either.
(Moving to a more efficient system of land tenure, in the long run, would just increase the number of people with no change in standards of living.)
War *does* raise living standards for most people, but this is the result of falling land rents, it has nothing to do with Malthusian effects.
Land rents fall with war because there's less people so the land/labor ratio goes up and living standards go up. But this means that mortality rates fall (better nutrition, etc.) and if fertility stays constant (or goes up) population will start growing until the war population deficit is made up and you're back at old living standards. So this fits the Malthusian story like a glove.
Again, Crusades, which involved sending a bunch of European troublemakers to die in distant lands were rather a way to increase mortality rates. In fact I think even standard historians stress this fact in their standard accounts.
Posted by: younotsneaky at Feb 13, 2007 4:47:18 PM
If I understand it correctly, a malthusian trap does not imply a steady state population, but that increases in productive technology are offset by population growth and deminishing returns.
Granted. But it remains controversial over whether medieval Europe was in fact in such a situation. One of the more troublesome episodes to fit to a Malthusian model is the recovery from the black plague. Had the population been in a Malthusian trap, one would at least naively expect the plague to be followed by a rise in real incomes (only more-productive lands need to be cultivated to feed the smaller population, and less-productive lands can be abandoned), this rise in real incomes to be followed by rapid population growth until the pre-plague situation was restored.
But in fact, real wages continued to fall after the plague, and did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 1360s; moreover, the plague was merely the most dramatic event in a long-term period of demographic collapse that lasted until about 1400, and even thereafter, strong population growth did not resume until the 1500s.
Malthusian models are used by many within the economic-history-of-Europe debate. But many aspects of this history can be fit at least as well by monetarist models.
Posted by: Cyrus at Feb 13, 2007 4:55:49 PM
One of the more troublesome episodes to fit to a Malthusian model is the recovery from the black plague...least naively expect the plague to be followed by a rise in real incomes...real wages continued to fall after the plague, and did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 1360s
Eh? Black plague fits the Malthusian story perfectly. First 1360's is only like 10yrs after the end of the first outbreak so one definetly would not expect Malthusian pressure to be working yet. However wages did rise after the plague and fell subsequently afterwards as population increased.
Wages in 1400 (a generation or two after the plague) = 18lbs of wheat/day
Wages in 1650 (once Malthusian pressure increased population) = 9lbs of wheat/dau
You can also look at Fig 1 in the link and see that blip between 1300 and 1800 or so.
Or look at Fig 8 in this paper
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/long_march_of_history.pdf
For pop in England go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_England
and look at 1350 to 1801.
Monetarist models? I don't even know what these are in this context.
Posted by: younotsneaky at Feb 13, 2007 5:20:23 PM
But in fact, real wages continued to fall after the plague, and did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 1360s
Clark's data (figure 7) seem to indicate otherwise. In his chart, English real wages shot up after the plague hit England in 1348 and kept on rising until 1450.
Posted by: tc at Feb 13, 2007 5:22:48 PM
if you're gonna say that the system of land tenure can do that you got some serious backing up to do.
I don't think anyone would consider Taiwan and SK "Malthusian".
This is the whole point. Compared to other countries (including Europe and the US) Taiwan and SK make far more productive use of land rent. By contrast, in Africa and Latin America, the Malthusian trap is greatly reinforced by the fact that the most productive land is owned by a few monopolists, with most people earning a pittance *AND* paying taxes on top of that.
(Moving to a more efficient system of land tenure, in the long run, would just increase the number of people with no change in standards of living.)
Nope, increasing the number of people *raises* the standard of living by enabling a broader division of labor and economies of scale.
Land rents fall with war because there's less people so the land/labor ratio goes up and living standards go up.
They fall for all sorts of reasons - increased risk, etc. Declining population is not a very important factor.
Whether the land/labor ratio is an accurate measure of living standards depends on institutional factors. In primitive, landlordist economies, labor's margin of production is far more relevant.
Posted by: anon at Feb 13, 2007 6:00:32 PM
anon, I'm slightly confused. Are you talking about modern Taiwan, SK, LA, and Africa or historical counterparts?
Your second comment also indicates you're thinking about modern economies. Malthusian/historical economies - diminishing product of labor, not economies of scale (yes, I know the diff). Division of labor is somewhat constrained on a traditional farm after a certain point.
In primitive, landlordist economies, labor's margin of production is far more relevant.
and uh, that depends on what exactly? (Hint, the answer has a numerator and a denominator)
Posted by: younotsneaky at Feb 13, 2007 6:29:56 PM
