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Three indicators of cultural success
As distinct from happiness, of course:
1. If a kid does badly in school, does the parent genuinely get mad at the kid and withhold affection?
2. Can people wait in an orderly line?
3. Can people stay in their designated lane when driving a car?
I wonder how these variables, if measured, would fare in cross-country growth regressions. I covered these points and others in my talk in Buenos Aires. Going way back, here is my sushi test for minimal levels of social trust.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 14, 2008 at 12:28 PM in Travels | Permalink
Comments
Don't Asian-Americans fail (1)?
Posted by: Sam at Aug 14, 2008 12:40:27 PM
As an Indian-American, I can say that India strikes me as Yes to the first and EMPHATICALLY NO to the other two.
Posted by: Jay at Aug 14, 2008 12:44:34 PM
Don't Asian-Americans fail (1)?
What do you count as "failure"? Withholding, or not withholding? I don't know what Asians do, so I can't use that knowledge to try to interpret what you're saying.
Posted by: Constant at Aug 14, 2008 12:49:25 PM
Is there a link to the B.A. talk?
Posted by: Mercutio.Mont at Aug 14, 2008 12:52:03 PM
I don't know about that. My experience in Beijing indicates that #3 is unlikely at best, #2 is out of the question and #1 (as a teacher) seems to be up for quite a bit of debate, yet, would China be considered a complete failure culturally?
What, outside of these parameters, defines "cultural success?"
They do have sushi, for what it's worth.
Posted by: Adam at Aug 14, 2008 12:52:08 PM
Jay, likewise for China.
I don't know how you define "cultural success", but it does not seem to correlate strongly with economic growth.
Posted by: at Aug 14, 2008 12:52:25 PM
Re: the "sushi test" from your 2004 post. I offer Russia as a counterexample.
Sushi restaurant chains are springing up all over Moscow, and seem to be doing well, usually quite full. It is far from clear that this means people in Russia trust one another, or that Russia is a great place for foreigners to invest.
Posted by: at Aug 14, 2008 12:57:55 PM
Well, I noticed that in China, drivers in Beijing did well on (3), drivers in Shanghai and Xi'an were pretty good as well, but drivers in Kunming and Guilin didn't care that much about the line dividing directions of traffic, never mind the lines between lanes.
Posted by: secretivek at Aug 14, 2008 12:59:24 PM
I hope this is tongue-in-cheek. 2 and 3 are ridiculously anglo-saxon measures of cultural success. (1 seems more culturally invariant.)
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Aug 14, 2008 1:09:05 PM
The variables are probably endogenous anyway. For example point 1: a child's education gains importance after a society overcomes subsistance agriculture.
Posted by: JSK at Aug 14, 2008 1:20:46 PM
Sweden seems to be the reverse of India. Possibly no on the first one and emphatically yes to the other two.
Posted by: Martin at Aug 14, 2008 1:37:42 PM
Any believer in individualism would regard "cultural success" as a meaningless and subjective designation.
Posted by: Dave at Aug 14, 2008 1:38:57 PM
The variables are probably endogenous anyway. For example point 1: a child's education gains importance after a society overcomes subsistance agriculture.
I thought that was the point. The parents wouldn't be angry and withhold affection for poor academic performance if a country's economy was based on subsistence agriculture, because education wouldn't matter much.
Posted by: way too obsessed with this thread at Aug 14, 2008 1:41:10 PM
All will correlate, but the point you are trying to make is unclear. Why not just add darkness of skin and be done with it?
Posted by: paul at Aug 14, 2008 1:41:37 PM
The variables are probably endogenous anyway. For example point 1: a child's education gains importance after a society overcomes subsistance agriculture.
I thought that was the point. The parents wouldn't be angry and withhold affection for poor academic performance if a country's economy was based on subsistence agriculture, because education wouldn't matter much.
Posted by: way too obsessed with this thread at Aug 14, 2008 1:41:49 PM
If a kid does badly in school, does the parent genuinely get mad at the kid and withhold affection
Withholding affection is a form of authoritarian parenting, and it doesn't even correlate with successful outcomes in the West. (Asian-American parents are more authoritarian, so of course Americans assume this must be the "better" style; unfortunately authoritarian style correlates with worse outcomes in Asian homes as well)
Of course, the correlations are simply not causative anyway; school performance and adult outcomes are a result of genetics and not parents. So advising others to withhold affection from their children will only increase misery without making any progress in academic outcomes.
Bryan Caplan seems to agree.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Aug 14, 2008 1:55:19 PM
"2 and 3 are ridiculously anglo-saxon measures of cultural success." and "Why not just add darkness of skin and be done with it?"
So are you saying that objectively beneficial behaviors are inappropriate measures of success when they are associated more with "anglo-saxons" than other cultures/races, or are you claiming that having orderly lines and drivers who stay in their lanes is not an objective benefit?
Posted by: Doug at Aug 14, 2008 1:58:01 PM
Another post that boggles my feeble mind.
#1 is just strange- withhold affection?
#2 is not correct, if by "cultural success" you hope to have correlation with e.g., emergent cooperative behavior that can serve as a foundation of good institutions. The evidence of this is that Russians became incredibly good at waiting in orderly lines - holding each other's place for hours at a time without complaint, etc; yet this was not the only thing they learned from their communist institutions. They also learned bureaucratic entrepreneurial behavior (corruption) instead of economic entrepreneurial behavior. They learned dependence on government. They learned to distrust business and trust authority. None of these things seem like good cultural attributes, particularly for forming good institutions.
I have no particular comments on #3.
Posted by: liberty at Aug 14, 2008 2:02:57 PM
I agree with Doug - for each of these criteria, meeting the criterion is objectively better than not meeting them. I'd be interested in how highly modernized non-Western cultures perform on this. How's Japan, Taiwan, or Singapore? How's the first-world parts of South Africa? And just for general interest, how's Russia?
Posted by: anonymous_coward at Aug 14, 2008 2:03:54 PM
Regarding #1 which way is this supposed to go. Do parents do this in the USA?
(my parents in New Zealand would never do that, the only thing you could do at school to make your parents mad is get caught with illegal drugs).
Based on what I saw on some recent travels, Nicaragua does just fine at #2 and #3, but I did see a fight break out in a restaurant. Another criteria to add to the cross country regressions.
Posted by: stubydoo at Aug 14, 2008 2:29:31 PM
I have to disagree that #3 is objectively better. There's probably some degree of "not staying in your lane, but paying attention to your surroundings" that could well make traffic more efficient. There were places in China where it seemed to me that squeezing lanes made better use of the roads.
Or take a look at videos of this genre: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vietnam%20crossing%20the%20street&search_type=&aq=f
Posted by: secretivek at Aug 14, 2008 3:19:01 PM
I would also add, for example:
#4 Per capita pct of incarceration
#5 Pct of population with Obsesity problems
HC
Posted by: Happy Camper at Aug 14, 2008 3:40:42 PM
Have not seen all Asian families, only a large extended Chinese one (4 generations, more than 350 members in US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China and Malaysia).
Withholding affection is one way of trying to enforce parental will/wishes/hopes/dreams, but there are other Chinese parents who love unconditionally. However, ALL are ambitious for their children. See Joy Luck Club, the movie, for good generalizations of how Chinese families can differ.
Posted by: at Aug 14, 2008 3:55:54 PM
Either you've forgotten about the existence of Ireland and (particularly) Italy, or you've forgotten:
4) are they white?
Posted by: dsquared at Aug 14, 2008 5:37:30 PM
Funny, people in Hong Kong often call main-landers "mei wen hua" (literally "uncultured") often for (2) and (3)
Posted by: Q dub at Aug 14, 2008 6:28:23 PM
