26 ms·

Experiment that ended in 1767 still linked to higher incomes, education levels

304 points by a_w 8y ago

Meai 8y ago
The study is still incomplete until you figure out whether the belief in God and specifically the bible are actually what helped retain the knowledge and work ethic over multiple generations and how it compares to atheist/muslim/[other religion] communities. Instead we get a bold claim that education itself is enough to help people when maybe the bible or religious belief in general was a primary ingredient in that help.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  My protestant mother explained me once something that went like this: there is a protestant ethic that says God reward his believers with success in life so protestants would then work hard or try to be successful as a way to seek confirmation from the community that they are good standing believers. I don't know much about protestant ethic but that sounded plausible to me.
  - raincom 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
  - NonEUCitizen 8y ago
    Jesuits are Catholics.
  - goto11 8y ago
    Calvinists does have this views, but Lutherans does not. Since the Lutheran populations (Scandinavia and northern Germany) seem to historically have been as economically successful as the comparable Calvinist populations, I think this hypothesis cannot be true. In any case, both Jesuits and Franciscans are Catholic.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > there is a protestant ethic that says God reward his believers with success in life so protestants would then work hard or try to be successful as a way to seek confirmation from the community that they are good standing believers. As the story goes, protestants changed their religion (or better yet created a new one) to fit their peculiar cultural trats, not the other way around.
  - BirdieNZ 8y ago
    That's known as the prosperity gospel, and it is not the same thing as the Protestant work ethic. It is also a particularly modern problem/belief, and unlikely to be the cause of the economic differences between Catholics and Protestants. The Protestant work ethic is far more about the theology of the Reformers, and in particular the Calvinistic Reformers. Their doctrines included the idea of doing all that you do for the glory of God (including your vocation, and thus compelling excellence at work), treating your material possessions as ultimately belonging to God and not yourself, and thus not to be wasted in frivolities, denial of the self and self-pleasure, resulting in less waste on "fancy living", and much less of a focus on giving to the Church as a means of attaining grace. This resulted in private individuals accruing more wealth. It certainly isn't the only reason for European capitalism and wealth, but it appears to be a factor.
- naim08 8y ago
  I wonder if religion did play a role. One particular case that is interesting: USA. USA is pretty religious country(>2/3 believe in god and angels) relative to other western countries(where religion is in decline and below 1/2). Its often argued that the religious nature(protestants) of USA shaped the superpower and its economic dominance. Nearly all founding fathers were wealthy land owners who were also deeply religious. The god that they believed in was a wealthy god, who told his subjects it was okay to pursue wealth and fortune. So its not surprising that Televangelists ask for crazy donations and live like the wealthy.
  - Normal_gaussian 8y ago
    Or, more simply, the USA has had huge amounts of natural resources available to it, and profited from the wars that wrecked the previous superpowers.
    - emn13 8y ago
      ...and easily defensible borders for when things did go pearshaped, and peaceful (and weak) neighbors to avoid the drain of constant defense, and had lots of internal cultures to draw from. And in any case throughout certainly the first half the 20th century the US was not uniquely religious; much of europe was too, and non-coincidentally shared the same faiths. The ascent of the US appears to have occurred at least somewhat before the loss of faith in europe. So... who knows? I mean, there are so many differences you're never going to be able to pick the various effects apart without careful - but subjective and error-prone - plain old reasoning. I don't see any particular reason to believe religion played a very notable role, but I don't think it's an absurd notion either: I just don't know, and haven't seen a very convincing argument either way.
    - mc32 8y ago
      Russia, Mexico, Brazil, etc., have or had more readily available natural resources. The US, unlike the Spanish viceroyalties relied more on agriculture and trade than the Portuguese and Spanish colonies who stuck gold in the Americas. Japan is natural resource poor yet it’s the worlds third leading economy. So thats not the main driver.
- simen 8y ago
  Are you for real? It's hardly a bold claim that education helps spread and retain knowledge. This is well known and supported by numerous studies. We know that parents' economic and educational status correlates well with children's economic and educational status. Also, this area was more or less completely converted to Christianity. If everyone's Christian, that can hardly account for the fact that economic and educational status correlates with distance to these missions. The article also mentions that this same relationship did not hold for the Fransiscan missions, who similarly promoted Catholicism and belief in the Bible, but didn't focus as much on education. This is unexpected if Christianity by itself was the primary cause. Also, I'm not an expert on the Guarani or Jesuit missions, but it seems that actually the natives were the ones who dictated how labor was to be organized: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614138 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614138 This says that they established a sort of proto-socialist system (my word, not theirs) of communal ownership and redistribution of food on mission lands by threatening to go on strike, essentially. Since the Jesuits were totally dependent on the Guarani as the primary labor force farming and feeding the missions, they couldn't impose the harsher labor regime they wanted. This doesn't sound like unenlightened Indians being taught the value of hard work by Jesus, it sounds like a well-organized group of people who knew the value of their own labor and took steps to ensure that they could benefit fairly from it. All in all, if you want to claim that the power of Christian belief alone can account for these findings, I think the burden of proof is squarely on your shoulders.
- baddox 8y ago
  I’m more curious about why the Jesuits chose to build their missions where they did. I highly doubt they placed them randomly, and strongly suspect that they placed them in places with good opportunities for building thriving communities.
  - ziotom78 8y ago
    The authors considered this objection and rejected it. Apparently, the "best" places were already taken by Franciscans, which arrived in the New World maggiore the Jesuits.
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
  The really crazy thing is that the modernists/leftists/futurists/etc make bold claims that they can replace culture with an unnamed and undefined culture to good avail! They are never pushed to back this up with evidence - and in the few cases that they are, they cry "fascist, nazi" etc... Their evidence always amounts to finding flaws or issues in existing culture. Anyone with any knowledge of logic should be able to understand why finding issues in culture/religion/the-way-things-are is not evidence to any degree that a new (and especially undefined) culture is more problem-free. They just seem to want a government-sanctioned blessing to destroy and become our authorities.
  - JohnStrangeII 8y ago
    It is evident to anyone who seriously studies Western civilization that our (mostly) shared values are an offspring of the French Revolution, similar, though earlier, slower and less violent democratic developments in England, humanism and enlightenment (Rousseau, etc.), utilitarianism to some extent - Mill addressed the Social Question and the utilitarian tradition later evolved to modern liberalism -, and medical, hygienic, and technological advances, last but not least factories and modern manufacturing and the invention of fertilizers. Some modern values are even the result of such mundane things as officers and politicians fearing death due to the power and sophistication of modern weapons, leading to international treaties to ban certain weapons and disarm countries, as well as new multilateral diplomatic treaties and conventions (U.N., Geneva Conventions, etc.). It is easy to see that there is no coherent set of "Christian values" that is not based on secular traditions, just look at the history of Christian torture (middle age), genocides, child abuse, Christian support for Feudalism, crusades, and so forth. The Christian values you endorse nowadays are an invention that didn't exist 150 years ago and resulted from the influence of other ideologies on Christianity, not the opposite.
    - pokemongoaway 8y ago
      This is a straw man. I did not argue that all of western civilization are based on a coherent set of Christian values. I don't know why you put "Christian values" in quotes either; I didn't mention "Christian values" in my post. Not only did you make a straw man to attack, but then you falsely claimed that I "endorsed" it! It is really impossible to have a reasonable discussion when this level of dishonest tactics are employed.
- zczc 8y ago
  The study compares effects of activity by Jesuits and by Franciscans. Both are Catholic orders so the difference is not related to the religion, but to the focus on education in Jesuits missions
  - Meai 8y ago
    Maybe the jesuit order did very little or nothing to spread catholicism, as their mission was described to combat poverty and health issues. We can see this kind of faith divorced service in catholic missions and hospitals. They don't require anything in return, not even the time to sit through a sermon.
    - zczc 8y ago
      In that times the primary goal of all catholic missions was to spread Catholicism, not to provide welfare to "pagans"
    - sgt101 8y ago
      I do not think that you have ever encountered The Jesuits... They are as Catholic as can be.
- pygy_ 8y ago
  This is addressed in the article. The effect is uniquely found around former Jesuit missions, not Franciscan ones. > The Franciscans helped, too. The mendicant order had been in the area longer than the Jesuits. It wasn’t expelled. But the Franciscans focused on poverty and health, rather than education and vocation. Valencia found that, perhaps as a result, families’ economic and educational outcomes didn’t vary based on their distance to that order’s missions.
  - iguy 8y ago
    This would be more convincing if it had a map of where the Franciscans set up shop. Does anyone know of one? The article has a map of where the Jesuit missions were located, and they are in quite a small area, basically in a line about 300km long. So the variable "distance to closest Jesuit" is probably just distance from this region. http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024 http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024
- imgabe 8y ago
  There should be a number of other missions that were led by orders who stressed a belief in God but not necessarily education the way that the Jesuits do. It would be simple enough to see if the same levels of achievement persisted around the non-Jesuit missions.
  - rdl 8y ago
    Which they did, described in article. As I was reading it I kept coming up with “why not X instead” and a paragraph or two later they recognized that point and addressed it to my satisfaction.
    - macintux 8y ago
      Most of the discussion here is driven by people who clearly did not read the entire article. Maddening.
dingdingdang 8y ago
Site is down for me at moment, mirror at: http://archive.is/W3G60 http://archive.is/W3G60
jhoechtl 8y ago
I don't get the gist. But my interpretation would be that missions supported literacy to read the bible. Once you were able to read this capability could naturally be applied to other domains (instead reading just the bible) as well?
- kijin 8y ago
  According to the article, the Jesuits taught local people "blacksmithing, arithmetic and embroidery." The missions seem to have been more about vocational training than about literacy, although I'm sure they tried to teach the Bible as well.
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    Religion is one of the many topics Jesuits teach. To be ordained a Jesuit father one must hold two university diplomas: one in theology, and one in another discipline. I went to a Jesuit high school, and some of the teachers were priests. My religion teacher (who also gave math classes, but not to me) was an electrical engineer whose master thesis pertained to ring token networks. He also ended up doing jail time after sexually assaulting his nephew, but that's another story...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- narag 8y ago
  Those times in catholic countries Bible was in Latin so I very much doubt that it was taught at all. What did they teach then? To read, write, do maths and practical stuff for jobs. Edit: of course they would teach religion, but not from reading the Bible.
- 706f6f70 8y ago
  The Jesuit approach was to teach people about Catholicism through all aspects of life, not just reading the Bible. Plays, music, and almost anything you could imagine would be created in order to teach people about Christ [1]. The end result is that the Jesuit order developed an incredibly strong academic tradition in basically every field. The Jesuits, especially around the 1600s emphasized adopting some customs of the local culture in order to spread Christianity, so you see Jesuits arriving in China and Japan learning the local language, dressing in local clothing, and even emulating some of the local traditions. Then they would use their advanced knowledge and willingness to provide education as a means of spreading Catholicism. For example, Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary to China impressed the Chinese so thoroughly that he was the first European ever invited to the Forbidden City. In the early 1600s, He was hugely influential in spreading more modern astronomical findings to China and he also provided the Chinese with the first modern (as in complete) map of the world. He was even nice enough to label it in Mandarin. The Jesuits were extremely thorough at documenting their efforts so they were able to discern what worked from what didn't. Language became a very obvious barrier, namely that it was quite hard to translate some Catholic theological concepts (e.g. a Trinitarian God) into some languages. This meant that they emphasized learning the local language even more, but also would devote some effort to teaching locals Latin or some other suitable Romantic language - usually the one attached to the European power in control of the area. The effectiveness of temporary missions also proved to be problematic: converted locals "unconverted" after the missions left, so missions became more permanent and there was a focus on becoming a part of the local community. In practice, this meant constructing permanent locals for the missions (which usually had schools or universities attached). --- [1] This is probably best summarized by the concept of "Opus Dei" (God's Work) and the universal call to holiness. The idea is that your daily work, regardless of profession, should be considered an offering to God. If your work is an offering to God, then it must be your best work so you should not be either mediocre or half-assed about it.
CalRobert 8y ago
Just because Excel gave you a trendline doesn't mean you should go with it. Their choice of graph detracts from their argument. They do address confounding variables a bit but it isn't especially thorough.
- FabHK 8y ago
  Have you looked at the statistics? Do you think you can glance at a graph and have better insight than someone that has carefully studied the underlying data, including run a regression over it? Do you realise that the trend line slope has a t-stat of 4.36? Did you notice that all lines contained within the 95% confidence interval for the trend are negatively sloped?
- invisible 8y ago
  This is an article summarizing a 90+ page paper. It lacks details because it is a summary broadcasting news about a study.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
It's interesting that the root cause is attributed to education and not living near a mission. That is live near a mission and end up 10% more educated. Be 10% more educated and earn 10% more. If A leads to B, and B to C, isn't A ultimately the cause of C?
- sabas123 8y ago
  > If A leads to B, and B to C, isn't A ultimately the cause of C? Only if the mappings hold for every element, ie every A has to lead to B and every B has to lead to C before you can conclude that A causes B
  - jlawson 8y ago
    Not really, causation doesn't have to be 100%. Example: Getting shot causes holes in your lungs. Holes in your lungs cause you to die. Therefore, getting shot causes you to die. All the above, including the inference in the last sentence, are valid statements, even though they don't hold true in 100% of cases. Answer to grandparent's question is: Yes, if A->B->C, then A->C. Just make sure those casuative arrows actually exist before you make this deduction.
    - giovannibonetti 8y ago
      I think that is a bad example because there are multiple ways to die from getting shot. So, even though there is not 100% chance that you die from holes in your lungs, there is a pretty high chance that you will die from any complication.
    - ComputerGuru 8y ago
      No, and your example is perfect. Getting shot can end up NOT leading to B (and then not leading to C). Get shot in the leg and live. No B means you can’t assume C.
      - jlawson 8y ago
        You're right. But in natural language, statements about causation don't have to be 100 percent guaranteed to be valid. Otherwise there's very little you could really say about the world. Consider: "smoking causes cancer." According to you, this would be false.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
10 years of additional education for 10% more income? How is that worth it?
- nkurz 8y ago
  people living near the ruins of Jesuit missions complete 10 to 15 percent more years of education and earn 10 percent more Are you making a joke that I don't get, or did you skip over the first occurrence of "percent"?
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    Didn’t see percent. Thanks.
syats 8y ago
I would be ashamed to publish the graph with the "trend", the fit is so incredibly bad.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Question: if I analyze 100 junk datasets and come up with 1 which has a statistically significant relationship (especially following some horrid-fit trendline like this) isn't there going to be some name for this? After 100 datasets you're virtually necessarily going to come across these misleading conclusions, no?
  - duality 8y ago
    I've heard that called "data dredging."
  - idm 8y ago
    It's called the "file drawer problem" in which research is conducted but not published because it wasn't significant. You're referring to "Type I error" in which a statistically significant result is obtained by chance, not because the effect is real. This article does not appear to be an example of the hypothetical scenario you proposed. The trend line is not a "horrid-fit," as attested to by the statistical analysis published in the article - which is open access and may be read for free. This is a scientific article - and unless you're a scientist, it may be difficult to understand the entire article.
  - SmileyJames 8y ago
    https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/ I've heard it called p-value hacking, Wikipedia refers to it as data-dredging.
  - derf_ 8y ago
    Yes, it is the "Family-wise error rate". You need to perform "correction for multiple tests". The simplest, most conservative form is Bonferroni correction [1], where you just divide the required significance threshold by the number of tests you perform. In your example, if you required significance at the 99% level (1% chance a false positive, or "Type I error"), then for 100 datasets, each individual one would require significance at the 99.99% level (0.01% false positives for each data set). (99.99%)^100 = 99.005%. This does not require any assumptions about the independence of the tests. Independent tests are the worst case, so this over-corrects if there is actual correlation between the measurements. There are other, more complicated correction methods that do not give up as much statistical power (i.e., produce fewer false negatives), but that may require making more assumptions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction
atentaten 8y ago
I know the article isn’t attempting to portray the Jesuits as good actors, but from a basic human context, the indigenous Guarani didn’t care about being Western-educated or earning high incomes or need these things before their subjugation by the Spaniards. Their original way of life was destroyed and they were forced to comply with the Jesuits or any other conquest-seeking organization. This is like one society(A) conquering a perfectly functioning desert dwelling culture(B) that was previously unconcerned with A and teaching B how to swim the butterfly stroke because being a good butterfly swimmer leads to prosperity in society A’s socioeconomic system. This now valuable training was passed on through the generations of B and today they are good swimmers and more prosperous in the new society then those who historically didn’t get the lesson. And we look at this correlation to say that investments in swimming is a good thing and pat ourselves on the back. Ok.
- zw123456 8y ago
  I know you are getting down voted but I think there is a valid point to be taken into consideration here. It seems like the evaluation of how these groups of people are doing today is being see through the lens of our own biased ideals of what "better" is. Sometimes I wonder about some of the indigenousness peoples that have been effectively wiped out around the world what if we had a "prime directive" and let them develop on their own? Could they have founded a civilization that perhaps is "better" in other ways. Maybe one that lives more harmoniously with the environment rather than cooking the planet? Just something to think about.
  - nebulous1 8y ago
    > through the lens of our own biased ideals of what "better" is I agree that thinking about ideas like that is important, but I have to point out that it's not like the entire planet was conquered by a single culture, only large parts of it were conquered by the European powers. Civilizations were founded in many different places, and the rare existing cultures who eschewed trade and weren't conquered haven't developed in a long time. There is actually a question as to whether they live a generally more fulfilling life than we do, but that wouldn't be because they developed a better way, instead it's that they didn't develop at all.
MR4D 8y ago
A better title would be “Economic Development and Investment has Lasting Influence”. (Brought to you by Obvious Publishing, Inc.) Isn’t that what civilization is all about?
- MR4D 8y ago
  Wow, someone didn’t like my comment! So I’ll try again... What the article is discussing is an effect of civilization. Humans invest in things to create lasting effects. Perhaps the best documentation on this theory is Porter’s Diamond [0], which helps explain things like Silicon Valley for tech, HOUSTON for Oil & Gas, or car builders in Northern Italy. If we didn’t see these effects, then there would be no way to advance civilization. Put another way, there have to be lasting effects a good part of the time, or we’d still live back in the Stone Age. My frustration is that the author seems to think this is amazing place, despite the fact that it can be found all over the world. Another example would be London for finance, and Switzerland for banking. [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/porter-diamond.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/porter-diamond.asp
darkhorn 8y ago
Normality test and normplot of residuals? Durbin-Watson test and residuals vs order plot? Residuals vs fit test? Bartlett’s test?
misiogames 8y ago
I'm from that region in Argentina, my state is called Misiones (Misions) because is the area where those where concentrated, the missing piece is that it was heavily populated by European migrants in 3 waves: beginning of 19 century, post WWI and post WWII; the same happened on the Paraguay and Brazil neighboring areas, this lead to a rapid development of the whole region, which continues today. Now, sadly, most of that development didn't include the guarani tribes that today still live in poverty. The only aspect that seems to remain in guarani culture from those times is music, playing guitar & violin, everything else, construction, writing, etc, is gone, this includes religion.
- gus_massa 8y ago
  Hi from Buenos Aires! The population of the zone has a mixed ancestry. There are a lot of small details that still survive, like the mate. Also, there are a lot of small details in the language of the zone, the pronunciation is slightly different (or very different, it's difficult to understand some of the people), there are many loaned words and expressions. I'm not sure about the religion, but my family is from Jujuy (the part of Argentina near Bolivia) and most of the people there is officially Catholic but there is a lot of mix with the prehispanic religions, so I guess that in Misiones there is a lot of mix of with the guarani religion. (Actually, the official Catholic religion has a lot of loaned parts from the previous European religions.)
- dpark 8y ago
  > The only aspect that seems to remain in guarani culture from those times is music, playing guitar & violin... Those are both European instruments. There might be Guarani themes or styles mixed in, but those are not traditional (pre-European) instruments. Likely even the style of music is extremely heavily influenced by the colonists if the “traditional” instruments are now European. Colonization doesn’t leave a lot of indigenous culture intact.
ineedasername 8y ago
I work in the education sphere, and this is not too surprising: one of the most significant factors in students completing more optional advanced education programs are familial and peer expectations, which are then instilled in that student to in turn pass on to their own children later in life. Students from families where they are the first generation to go to college, for example, generally have lower average outcomes. Although some of the variance in those outcomes are due to lower average socioeconomic status rather than familial expectations.
- Swizec 8y ago
  As a child of parents who either didn't go to college, or were the first in the entire extended family and didn't graduate: This rings true. I was always encouraged to go to school. It's important they said. You need it to get a good job. BUT! The teachers are stupid. Don't trust them too much. They dont know everything. If they were really that good, they'd be doing it, not teaching. Always question what they tell you, verify things on your own. If something doesn't make sense, speak up and get them to explain. You'll soon see how shallow their knowledge really is. And don't worry. You're never gonna need any of this in real life. Grades are important! Get good grades. But also don't worry coz nobody is gonna care as soon as you're out of school. Mixed signals right? I never graduated and I like to think I got everything I needed out of college except a piece of paper. PS: In high school I was everyone's worst nightmare. When I was engaged, I'd ask a lot of questions and derail the instruction. When I thought your subject was stupid, I'd just not participate, avoid any and all homework, and get straight Fs. The straight Fs in particular had to have been frustrating to teachers because I'd then learn enough of their entire year's worth of curriculum in 2 weeks to get a D and pass the class. PPS: My mum eventually did go to college when I was in college. She graduated before me. Still says it's useless IRL.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    It sounds like your parents gave you great advice and instilled independent thinking into you (and realistic expectations for what education can provide). There are a lot of people out there who did great in school but never learned to think for themselves. Some of those people are now saddled in debt and don't have the skills to dig their way out.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
emersonrsantos 8y ago
> Valencia didn’t just rule out other possible explanations. He also established a few reasons that areas near the missions have tended to succeed at higher rates, even today. It's known that these areas had four immigration phases, from 1820 to 1960. The monarchy (then the government) began to stimulate the arrival of Europeans because of the vast land and good climate. The monarchy even used agressive propaganda and megalomanic promises. Our recent elected president came from one of those european immigration waves, from Italian Veneto region in 1888. There's a huge italian and german presence in this southern region (as well as in Argentina and neighbors), and also great natural resources that allowed agriculture and family farming to those european experienced farmers. This southern region today produces most of Brazil's grains, oilseeds (and exports). So in a way, knowledge, higher incomes and education levels were imported. Brazil is full of curious phenomena, and it deserves more sociological study, being a young country.
- iguy 8y ago
  Thanks, this seems pretty damning for the study. Any significant post-1767 immigration (and especially from some of the most developed parts of the world) would easily produce bigger effects than this claimed persistence from the Jesuits. How much do we know about the spatial distribution of such people, and their descendants? I mean not just southern Brazil, but it would be nice to see if there are clumps... especially if one was centred on where the missions were. Perhaps just filtering census data for German surnames would work? I bet this would correlate with literacy.
  - emersonrsantos 8y ago
    I agree with you. We have a more stong Guaraní presence in Bolivia and Paraguay today, about 280 thousand people living in four countries from a study in 2017 [1], which 85 thousand living in Brazil, which is neglegible comparing to the population numbers in that regions. The reality is that those communities are very poor, having even cases of institutionalized racism, where children were separated from their parents at their Guaraní and Kaiowá communities by the brazilian state and sent to child safety services, atrocious. [2] [1] https://mobilizacaonacionalindigena.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/280-mil-guarani-vivem-em-quatro-paises-diz-pesquisa-que-sera-apresentada-hoje-no-atl/ https://mobilizacaonacionalindigena.wordpress.com/2017/04/27... [2] https://cimi.org.br/2018/03/racismo-institucional-justificando-pobreza-estado-retira-criancas-de-suas-familias-guarani-e-kaiowa/ https://cimi.org.br/2018/03/racismo-institucional-justifican...
mirimir 8y ago
The article is at https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024 https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024 for what it's worth.
4bpp 8y ago
One potential confounder that the paper does not appear to address is the possibility that members of those missions fathered children with the native population, who(se descendants) stayed in place even after the mission left. Do we have any estimate, genetic or otherwise, how prevalent this was?
pessimizer 8y ago
The Jesuits brought more than education, they brought the standards with which they're being currently evaluated. I imagine that, at the time, people actively self-selected and self-deselected based on how interested they were in advancing in and trading with white culture, moving toward it and moving away from it. By the time that the Jesuits left, the area was filled with people whose ambitions were connected with white people. Those values have been passed down to some tiny extent long after the Jesuits have gone, bringing the locals slightly out of baseline. In 1767, people who were educated by the Jesuits would be considered to have infinitely higher education levels by this study (as opposed to a baseline of zero), and people who participated in commerce with the Jesuits and the Spanish would be considered to have infinitely higher incomes than the people who didn't (who would be considered to have an income of zero.) I bet you might find out that they are slightly more Catholic, and slightly more into Spanish TV and films.
anonyib 8y ago
Couldn't it just be the higher IQ being passed down by Jesuits sleeping with the indigenous population?
blahedo 8y ago
I would be interested in a similar study done in central Virginia. My county here closed the public schools for five years in the 60s in order to avoid integrating, and after they reopened most kids who'd been out never went back. Many are still alive today and still live here. But more importantly, so do their grandkids. And anecdotally, there is still a strong bias against the usefulness of school (leading to lack of attendance, and dropping out) among kids descended from the lost generation, that isn't present even just a few miles away in the next counties over. I don't think this has been quantitatively studied, but if the data backs up the anecdotal impression, it would essentially bolster the argument reported in the OP.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  > But more importantly, so do their grandkids. And anecdotally, there is still a strong bias against the usefulness of school (leading to lack of attendance, and dropping out) among kids descended from the lost generation, that isn't present even just a few miles away in the next counties over. I live in a rural area in a Southern state. My school never closed down to avoid integration, as far as I'm aware at least, but there is still a strong bias against education by those whose parents dropped out. Some have overcome that and see the importance of education, but I have many students who don't, because their parents are doing alright (though I bet things are worse than the students are aware of), so they can do the same thing too with only a high school education, or by dropping out altogether. They don't understand how different it is, but I, too, would love to see it quantified.
ldng 8y ago
Fascinating. I wonder if the reverse could be found. That is areas where educated "elites" were decimated and education level plummeted.

304 points by a_w 8y ago

Meai 8y ago

The study is still incomplete until you figure out whether the belief in God and specifically the bible are actually what helped retain the knowledge and work ethic over multiple generations and how it compares to atheist/muslim/[other religion] communities. Instead we get a bold claim that education itself is enough to help people when maybe the bible or religious belief in general was a primary ingredient in that help.

johnchristopher 8y ago
My protestant mother explained me once something that went like this: there is a protestant ethic that says God reward his believers with success in life so protestants would then work hard or try to be successful as a way to seek confirmation from the community that they are good standing believers. I don't know much about protestant ethic but that sounded plausible to me.
- raincom 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
- NonEUCitizen 8y ago
  Jesuits are Catholics.
- goto11 8y ago
  Calvinists does have this views, but Lutherans does not. Since the Lutheran populations (Scandinavia and northern Germany) seem to historically have been as economically successful as the comparable Calvinist populations, I think this hypothesis cannot be true. In any case, both Jesuits and Franciscans are Catholic.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > there is a protestant ethic that says God reward his believers with success in life so protestants would then work hard or try to be successful as a way to seek confirmation from the community that they are good standing believers. As the story goes, protestants changed their religion (or better yet created a new one) to fit their peculiar cultural trats, not the other way around.
- BirdieNZ 8y ago
  That's known as the prosperity gospel, and it is not the same thing as the Protestant work ethic. It is also a particularly modern problem/belief, and unlikely to be the cause of the economic differences between Catholics and Protestants. The Protestant work ethic is far more about the theology of the Reformers, and in particular the Calvinistic Reformers. Their doctrines included the idea of doing all that you do for the glory of God (including your vocation, and thus compelling excellence at work), treating your material possessions as ultimately belonging to God and not yourself, and thus not to be wasted in frivolities, denial of the self and self-pleasure, resulting in less waste on "fancy living", and much less of a focus on giving to the Church as a means of attaining grace. This resulted in private individuals accruing more wealth. It certainly isn't the only reason for European capitalism and wealth, but it appears to be a factor.
naim08 8y ago
I wonder if religion did play a role. One particular case that is interesting: USA. USA is pretty religious country(>2/3 believe in god and angels) relative to other western countries(where religion is in decline and below 1/2). Its often argued that the religious nature(protestants) of USA shaped the superpower and its economic dominance. Nearly all founding fathers were wealthy land owners who were also deeply religious. The god that they believed in was a wealthy god, who told his subjects it was okay to pursue wealth and fortune. So its not surprising that Televangelists ask for crazy donations and live like the wealthy.
- Normal_gaussian 8y ago
  Or, more simply, the USA has had huge amounts of natural resources available to it, and profited from the wars that wrecked the previous superpowers.
  - emn13 8y ago
    ...and easily defensible borders for when things did go pearshaped, and peaceful (and weak) neighbors to avoid the drain of constant defense, and had lots of internal cultures to draw from. And in any case throughout certainly the first half the 20th century the US was not uniquely religious; much of europe was too, and non-coincidentally shared the same faiths. The ascent of the US appears to have occurred at least somewhat before the loss of faith in europe. So... who knows? I mean, there are so many differences you're never going to be able to pick the various effects apart without careful - but subjective and error-prone - plain old reasoning. I don't see any particular reason to believe religion played a very notable role, but I don't think it's an absurd notion either: I just don't know, and haven't seen a very convincing argument either way.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Russia, Mexico, Brazil, etc., have or had more readily available natural resources. The US, unlike the Spanish viceroyalties relied more on agriculture and trade than the Portuguese and Spanish colonies who stuck gold in the Americas. Japan is natural resource poor yet it’s the worlds third leading economy. So thats not the main driver.
simen 8y ago
Are you for real? It's hardly a bold claim that education helps spread and retain knowledge. This is well known and supported by numerous studies. We know that parents' economic and educational status correlates well with children's economic and educational status. Also, this area was more or less completely converted to Christianity. If everyone's Christian, that can hardly account for the fact that economic and educational status correlates with distance to these missions. The article also mentions that this same relationship did not hold for the Fransiscan missions, who similarly promoted Catholicism and belief in the Bible, but didn't focus as much on education. This is unexpected if Christianity by itself was the primary cause. Also, I'm not an expert on the Guarani or Jesuit missions, but it seems that actually the natives were the ones who dictated how labor was to be organized: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614138 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/614138 This says that they established a sort of proto-socialist system (my word, not theirs) of communal ownership and redistribution of food on mission lands by threatening to go on strike, essentially. Since the Jesuits were totally dependent on the Guarani as the primary labor force farming and feeding the missions, they couldn't impose the harsher labor regime they wanted. This doesn't sound like unenlightened Indians being taught the value of hard work by Jesus, it sounds like a well-organized group of people who knew the value of their own labor and took steps to ensure that they could benefit fairly from it. All in all, if you want to claim that the power of Christian belief alone can account for these findings, I think the burden of proof is squarely on your shoulders.
baddox 8y ago
I’m more curious about why the Jesuits chose to build their missions where they did. I highly doubt they placed them randomly, and strongly suspect that they placed them in places with good opportunities for building thriving communities.
- ziotom78 8y ago
  The authors considered this objection and rejected it. Apparently, the "best" places were already taken by Franciscans, which arrived in the New World maggiore the Jesuits.
pokemongoaway 8y ago
The really crazy thing is that the modernists/leftists/futurists/etc make bold claims that they can replace culture with an unnamed and undefined culture to good avail! They are never pushed to back this up with evidence - and in the few cases that they are, they cry "fascist, nazi" etc... Their evidence always amounts to finding flaws or issues in existing culture. Anyone with any knowledge of logic should be able to understand why finding issues in culture/religion/the-way-things-are is not evidence to any degree that a new (and especially undefined) culture is more problem-free. They just seem to want a government-sanctioned blessing to destroy and become our authorities.
- JohnStrangeII 8y ago
  It is evident to anyone who seriously studies Western civilization that our (mostly) shared values are an offspring of the French Revolution, similar, though earlier, slower and less violent democratic developments in England, humanism and enlightenment (Rousseau, etc.), utilitarianism to some extent - Mill addressed the Social Question and the utilitarian tradition later evolved to modern liberalism -, and medical, hygienic, and technological advances, last but not least factories and modern manufacturing and the invention of fertilizers. Some modern values are even the result of such mundane things as officers and politicians fearing death due to the power and sophistication of modern weapons, leading to international treaties to ban certain weapons and disarm countries, as well as new multilateral diplomatic treaties and conventions (U.N., Geneva Conventions, etc.). It is easy to see that there is no coherent set of "Christian values" that is not based on secular traditions, just look at the history of Christian torture (middle age), genocides, child abuse, Christian support for Feudalism, crusades, and so forth. The Christian values you endorse nowadays are an invention that didn't exist 150 years ago and resulted from the influence of other ideologies on Christianity, not the opposite.
  - pokemongoaway 8y ago
    This is a straw man. I did not argue that all of western civilization are based on a coherent set of Christian values. I don't know why you put "Christian values" in quotes either; I didn't mention "Christian values" in my post. Not only did you make a straw man to attack, but then you falsely claimed that I "endorsed" it! It is really impossible to have a reasonable discussion when this level of dishonest tactics are employed.
zczc 8y ago
The study compares effects of activity by Jesuits and by Franciscans. Both are Catholic orders so the difference is not related to the religion, but to the focus on education in Jesuits missions
- Meai 8y ago
  Maybe the jesuit order did very little or nothing to spread catholicism, as their mission was described to combat poverty and health issues. We can see this kind of faith divorced service in catholic missions and hospitals. They don't require anything in return, not even the time to sit through a sermon.
  - zczc 8y ago
    In that times the primary goal of all catholic missions was to spread Catholicism, not to provide welfare to "pagans"
  - sgt101 8y ago
    I do not think that you have ever encountered The Jesuits... They are as Catholic as can be.
pygy_ 8y ago
This is addressed in the article. The effect is uniquely found around former Jesuit missions, not Franciscan ones. > The Franciscans helped, too. The mendicant order had been in the area longer than the Jesuits. It wasn’t expelled. But the Franciscans focused on poverty and health, rather than education and vocation. Valencia found that, perhaps as a result, families’ economic and educational outcomes didn’t vary based on their distance to that order’s missions.
- iguy 8y ago
  This would be more convincing if it had a map of where the Franciscans set up shop. Does anyone know of one? The article has a map of where the Jesuit missions were located, and they are in quite a small area, basically in a line about 300km long. So the variable "distance to closest Jesuit" is probably just distance from this region. http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024 http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024
imgabe 8y ago
There should be a number of other missions that were led by orders who stressed a belief in God but not necessarily education the way that the Jesuits do. It would be simple enough to see if the same levels of achievement persisted around the non-Jesuit missions.
- rdl 8y ago
  Which they did, described in article. As I was reading it I kept coming up with “why not X instead” and a paragraph or two later they recognized that point and addressed it to my satisfaction.
  - macintux 8y ago
    Most of the discussion here is driven by people who clearly did not read the entire article. Maddening.

dingdingdang 8y ago

Site is down for me at moment, mirror at: http://archive.is/W3G60 http://archive.is/W3G60

jhoechtl 8y ago

I don't get the gist. But my interpretation would be that missions supported literacy to read the bible. Once you were able to read this capability could naturally be applied to other domains (instead reading just the bible) as well?

kijin 8y ago
According to the article, the Jesuits taught local people "blacksmithing, arithmetic and embroidery." The missions seem to have been more about vocational training than about literacy, although I'm sure they tried to teach the Bible as well.
- pygy_ 8y ago
  Religion is one of the many topics Jesuits teach. To be ordained a Jesuit father one must hold two university diplomas: one in theology, and one in another discipline. I went to a Jesuit high school, and some of the teachers were priests. My religion teacher (who also gave math classes, but not to me) was an electrical engineer whose master thesis pertained to ring token networks. He also ended up doing jail time after sexually assaulting his nephew, but that's another story...
deleted 8y ago
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narag 8y ago
Those times in catholic countries Bible was in Latin so I very much doubt that it was taught at all. What did they teach then? To read, write, do maths and practical stuff for jobs. Edit: of course they would teach religion, but not from reading the Bible.
706f6f70 8y ago
The Jesuit approach was to teach people about Catholicism through all aspects of life, not just reading the Bible. Plays, music, and almost anything you could imagine would be created in order to teach people about Christ [1]. The end result is that the Jesuit order developed an incredibly strong academic tradition in basically every field. The Jesuits, especially around the 1600s emphasized adopting some customs of the local culture in order to spread Christianity, so you see Jesuits arriving in China and Japan learning the local language, dressing in local clothing, and even emulating some of the local traditions. Then they would use their advanced knowledge and willingness to provide education as a means of spreading Catholicism. For example, Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary to China impressed the Chinese so thoroughly that he was the first European ever invited to the Forbidden City. In the early 1600s, He was hugely influential in spreading more modern astronomical findings to China and he also provided the Chinese with the first modern (as in complete) map of the world. He was even nice enough to label it in Mandarin. The Jesuits were extremely thorough at documenting their efforts so they were able to discern what worked from what didn't. Language became a very obvious barrier, namely that it was quite hard to translate some Catholic theological concepts (e.g. a Trinitarian God) into some languages. This meant that they emphasized learning the local language even more, but also would devote some effort to teaching locals Latin or some other suitable Romantic language - usually the one attached to the European power in control of the area. The effectiveness of temporary missions also proved to be problematic: converted locals "unconverted" after the missions left, so missions became more permanent and there was a focus on becoming a part of the local community. In practice, this meant constructing permanent locals for the missions (which usually had schools or universities attached). --- [1] This is probably best summarized by the concept of "Opus Dei" (God's Work) and the universal call to holiness. The idea is that your daily work, regardless of profession, should be considered an offering to God. If your work is an offering to God, then it must be your best work so you should not be either mediocre or half-assed about it.

CalRobert 8y ago

Just because Excel gave you a trendline doesn't mean you should go with it. Their choice of graph detracts from their argument. They do address confounding variables a bit but it isn't especially thorough.

FabHK 8y ago
Have you looked at the statistics? Do you think you can glance at a graph and have better insight than someone that has carefully studied the underlying data, including run a regression over it? Do you realise that the trend line slope has a t-stat of 4.36? Did you notice that all lines contained within the 95% confidence interval for the trend are negatively sloped?
invisible 8y ago
This is an article summarizing a 90+ page paper. It lacks details because it is a summary broadcasting news about a study.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

It's interesting that the root cause is attributed to education and not living near a mission. That is live near a mission and end up 10% more educated. Be 10% more educated and earn 10% more. If A leads to B, and B to C, isn't A ultimately the cause of C?

sabas123 8y ago
> If A leads to B, and B to C, isn't A ultimately the cause of C? Only if the mappings hold for every element, ie every A has to lead to B and every B has to lead to C before you can conclude that A causes B
- jlawson 8y ago
  Not really, causation doesn't have to be 100%. Example: Getting shot causes holes in your lungs. Holes in your lungs cause you to die. Therefore, getting shot causes you to die. All the above, including the inference in the last sentence, are valid statements, even though they don't hold true in 100% of cases. Answer to grandparent's question is: Yes, if A->B->C, then A->C. Just make sure those casuative arrows actually exist before you make this deduction.
  - giovannibonetti 8y ago
    I think that is a bad example because there are multiple ways to die from getting shot. So, even though there is not 100% chance that you die from holes in your lungs, there is a pretty high chance that you will die from any complication.
  - ComputerGuru 8y ago
    No, and your example is perfect. Getting shot can end up NOT leading to B (and then not leading to C). Get shot in the leg and live. No B means you can’t assume C.
    - jlawson 8y ago
      You're right. But in natural language, statements about causation don't have to be 100 percent guaranteed to be valid. Otherwise there's very little you could really say about the world. Consider: "smoking causes cancer." According to you, this would be false.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

10 years of additional education for 10% more income? How is that worth it?

nkurz 8y ago
people living near the ruins of Jesuit missions complete 10 to 15 percent more years of education and earn 10 percent more Are you making a joke that I don't get, or did you skip over the first occurrence of "percent"?
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Didn’t see percent. Thanks.

syats 8y ago

I would be ashamed to publish the graph with the "trend", the fit is so incredibly bad.

wallace_f 8y ago
Question: if I analyze 100 junk datasets and come up with 1 which has a statistically significant relationship (especially following some horrid-fit trendline like this) isn't there going to be some name for this? After 100 datasets you're virtually necessarily going to come across these misleading conclusions, no?
- duality 8y ago
  I've heard that called "data dredging."
- idm 8y ago
  It's called the "file drawer problem" in which research is conducted but not published because it wasn't significant. You're referring to "Type I error" in which a statistically significant result is obtained by chance, not because the effect is real. This article does not appear to be an example of the hypothetical scenario you proposed. The trend line is not a "horrid-fit," as attested to by the statistical analysis published in the article - which is open access and may be read for free. This is a scientific article - and unless you're a scientist, it may be difficult to understand the entire article.
- SmileyJames 8y ago
  https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/ I've heard it called p-value hacking, Wikipedia refers to it as data-dredging.
- derf_ 8y ago
  Yes, it is the "Family-wise error rate". You need to perform "correction for multiple tests". The simplest, most conservative form is Bonferroni correction [1], where you just divide the required significance threshold by the number of tests you perform. In your example, if you required significance at the 99% level (1% chance a false positive, or "Type I error"), then for 100 datasets, each individual one would require significance at the 99.99% level (0.01% false positives for each data set). (99.99%)^100 = 99.005%. This does not require any assumptions about the independence of the tests. Independent tests are the worst case, so this over-corrects if there is actual correlation between the measurements. There are other, more complicated correction methods that do not give up as much statistical power (i.e., produce fewer false negatives), but that may require making more assumptions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction

atentaten 8y ago

I know the article isn’t attempting to portray the Jesuits as good actors, but from a basic human context, the indigenous Guarani didn’t care about being Western-educated or earning high incomes or need these things before their subjugation by the Spaniards. Their original way of life was destroyed and they were forced to comply with the Jesuits or any other conquest-seeking organization. This is like one society(A) conquering a perfectly functioning desert dwelling culture(B) that was previously unconcerned with A and teaching B how to swim the butterfly stroke because being a good butterfly swimmer leads to prosperity in society A’s socioeconomic system. This now valuable training was passed on through the generations of B and today they are good swimmers and more prosperous in the new society then those who historically didn’t get the lesson. And we look at this correlation to say that investments in swimming is a good thing and pat ourselves on the back. Ok.

zw123456 8y ago
I know you are getting down voted but I think there is a valid point to be taken into consideration here. It seems like the evaluation of how these groups of people are doing today is being see through the lens of our own biased ideals of what "better" is. Sometimes I wonder about some of the indigenousness peoples that have been effectively wiped out around the world what if we had a "prime directive" and let them develop on their own? Could they have founded a civilization that perhaps is "better" in other ways. Maybe one that lives more harmoniously with the environment rather than cooking the planet? Just something to think about.
- nebulous1 8y ago
  > through the lens of our own biased ideals of what "better" is I agree that thinking about ideas like that is important, but I have to point out that it's not like the entire planet was conquered by a single culture, only large parts of it were conquered by the European powers. Civilizations were founded in many different places, and the rare existing cultures who eschewed trade and weren't conquered haven't developed in a long time. There is actually a question as to whether they live a generally more fulfilling life than we do, but that wouldn't be because they developed a better way, instead it's that they didn't develop at all.

MR4D 8y ago

A better title would be “Economic Development and Investment has Lasting Influence”. (Brought to you by Obvious Publishing, Inc.) Isn’t that what civilization is all about?

MR4D 8y ago
Wow, someone didn’t like my comment! So I’ll try again... What the article is discussing is an effect of civilization. Humans invest in things to create lasting effects. Perhaps the best documentation on this theory is Porter’s Diamond [0], which helps explain things like Silicon Valley for tech, HOUSTON for Oil & Gas, or car builders in Northern Italy. If we didn’t see these effects, then there would be no way to advance civilization. Put another way, there have to be lasting effects a good part of the time, or we’d still live back in the Stone Age. My frustration is that the author seems to think this is amazing place, despite the fact that it can be found all over the world. Another example would be London for finance, and Switzerland for banking. [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/porter-diamond.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/porter-diamond.asp

darkhorn 8y ago

Normality test and normplot of residuals? Durbin-Watson test and residuals vs order plot? Residuals vs fit test? Bartlett’s test?

misiogames 8y ago

I'm from that region in Argentina, my state is called Misiones (Misions) because is the area where those where concentrated, the missing piece is that it was heavily populated by European migrants in 3 waves: beginning of 19 century, post WWI and post WWII; the same happened on the Paraguay and Brazil neighboring areas, this lead to a rapid development of the whole region, which continues today. Now, sadly, most of that development didn't include the guarani tribes that today still live in poverty. The only aspect that seems to remain in guarani culture from those times is music, playing guitar & violin, everything else, construction, writing, etc, is gone, this includes religion.

gus_massa 8y ago
Hi from Buenos Aires! The population of the zone has a mixed ancestry. There are a lot of small details that still survive, like the mate. Also, there are a lot of small details in the language of the zone, the pronunciation is slightly different (or very different, it's difficult to understand some of the people), there are many loaned words and expressions. I'm not sure about the religion, but my family is from Jujuy (the part of Argentina near Bolivia) and most of the people there is officially Catholic but there is a lot of mix with the prehispanic religions, so I guess that in Misiones there is a lot of mix of with the guarani religion. (Actually, the official Catholic religion has a lot of loaned parts from the previous European religions.)
dpark 8y ago
> The only aspect that seems to remain in guarani culture from those times is music, playing guitar & violin... Those are both European instruments. There might be Guarani themes or styles mixed in, but those are not traditional (pre-European) instruments. Likely even the style of music is extremely heavily influenced by the colonists if the “traditional” instruments are now European. Colonization doesn’t leave a lot of indigenous culture intact.

ineedasername 8y ago

I work in the education sphere, and this is not too surprising: one of the most significant factors in students completing more optional advanced education programs are familial and peer expectations, which are then instilled in that student to in turn pass on to their own children later in life. Students from families where they are the first generation to go to college, for example, generally have lower average outcomes. Although some of the variance in those outcomes are due to lower average socioeconomic status rather than familial expectations.

Swizec 8y ago
As a child of parents who either didn't go to college, or were the first in the entire extended family and didn't graduate: This rings true. I was always encouraged to go to school. It's important they said. You need it to get a good job. BUT! The teachers are stupid. Don't trust them too much. They dont know everything. If they were really that good, they'd be doing it, not teaching. Always question what they tell you, verify things on your own. If something doesn't make sense, speak up and get them to explain. You'll soon see how shallow their knowledge really is. And don't worry. You're never gonna need any of this in real life. Grades are important! Get good grades. But also don't worry coz nobody is gonna care as soon as you're out of school. Mixed signals right? I never graduated and I like to think I got everything I needed out of college except a piece of paper. PS: In high school I was everyone's worst nightmare. When I was engaged, I'd ask a lot of questions and derail the instruction. When I thought your subject was stupid, I'd just not participate, avoid any and all homework, and get straight Fs. The straight Fs in particular had to have been frustrating to teachers because I'd then learn enough of their entire year's worth of curriculum in 2 weeks to get a D and pass the class. PPS: My mum eventually did go to college when I was in college. She graduated before me. Still says it's useless IRL.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  It sounds like your parents gave you great advice and instilled independent thinking into you (and realistic expectations for what education can provide). There are a lot of people out there who did great in school but never learned to think for themselves. Some of those people are now saddled in debt and don't have the skills to dig their way out.

deleted 8y ago

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emersonrsantos 8y ago

> Valencia didn’t just rule out other possible explanations. He also established a few reasons that areas near the missions have tended to succeed at higher rates, even today. It's known that these areas had four immigration phases, from 1820 to 1960. The monarchy (then the government) began to stimulate the arrival of Europeans because of the vast land and good climate. The monarchy even used agressive propaganda and megalomanic promises. Our recent elected president came from one of those european immigration waves, from Italian Veneto region in 1888. There's a huge italian and german presence in this southern region (as well as in Argentina and neighbors), and also great natural resources that allowed agriculture and family farming to those european experienced farmers. This southern region today produces most of Brazil's grains, oilseeds (and exports). So in a way, knowledge, higher incomes and education levels were imported. Brazil is full of curious phenomena, and it deserves more sociological study, being a young country.

iguy 8y ago
Thanks, this seems pretty damning for the study. Any significant post-1767 immigration (and especially from some of the most developed parts of the world) would easily produce bigger effects than this claimed persistence from the Jesuits. How much do we know about the spatial distribution of such people, and their descendants? I mean not just southern Brazil, but it would be nice to see if there are clumps... especially if one was centred on where the missions were. Perhaps just filtering census data for German surnames would work? I bet this would correlate with literacy.
- emersonrsantos 8y ago
  I agree with you. We have a more stong Guaraní presence in Bolivia and Paraguay today, about 280 thousand people living in four countries from a study in 2017 [1], which 85 thousand living in Brazil, which is neglegible comparing to the population numbers in that regions. The reality is that those communities are very poor, having even cases of institutionalized racism, where children were separated from their parents at their Guaraní and Kaiowá communities by the brazilian state and sent to child safety services, atrocious. [2] [1] https://mobilizacaonacionalindigena.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/280-mil-guarani-vivem-em-quatro-paises-diz-pesquisa-que-sera-apresentada-hoje-no-atl/ https://mobilizacaonacionalindigena.wordpress.com/2017/04/27... [2] https://cimi.org.br/2018/03/racismo-institucional-justificando-pobreza-estado-retira-criancas-de-suas-familias-guarani-e-kaiowa/ https://cimi.org.br/2018/03/racismo-institucional-justifican...

mirimir 8y ago

The article is at https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024 https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy024 for what it's worth.

4bpp 8y ago

One potential confounder that the paper does not appear to address is the possibility that members of those missions fathered children with the native population, who(se descendants) stayed in place even after the mission left. Do we have any estimate, genetic or otherwise, how prevalent this was?

pessimizer 8y ago

The Jesuits brought more than education, they brought the standards with which they're being currently evaluated. I imagine that, at the time, people actively self-selected and self-deselected based on how interested they were in advancing in and trading with white culture, moving toward it and moving away from it. By the time that the Jesuits left, the area was filled with people whose ambitions were connected with white people. Those values have been passed down to some tiny extent long after the Jesuits have gone, bringing the locals slightly out of baseline. In 1767, people who were educated by the Jesuits would be considered to have infinitely higher education levels by this study (as opposed to a baseline of zero), and people who participated in commerce with the Jesuits and the Spanish would be considered to have infinitely higher incomes than the people who didn't (who would be considered to have an income of zero.) I bet you might find out that they are slightly more Catholic, and slightly more into Spanish TV and films.

anonyib 8y ago

Couldn't it just be the higher IQ being passed down by Jesuits sleeping with the indigenous population?

blahedo 8y ago

I would be interested in a similar study done in central Virginia. My county here closed the public schools for five years in the 60s in order to avoid integrating, and after they reopened most kids who'd been out never went back. Many are still alive today and still live here. But more importantly, so do their grandkids. And anecdotally, there is still a strong bias against the usefulness of school (leading to lack of attendance, and dropping out) among kids descended from the lost generation, that isn't present even just a few miles away in the next counties over. I don't think this has been quantitatively studied, but if the data backs up the anecdotal impression, it would essentially bolster the argument reported in the OP.

dorchadas 8y ago
> But more importantly, so do their grandkids. And anecdotally, there is still a strong bias against the usefulness of school (leading to lack of attendance, and dropping out) among kids descended from the lost generation, that isn't present even just a few miles away in the next counties over. I live in a rural area in a Southern state. My school never closed down to avoid integration, as far as I'm aware at least, but there is still a strong bias against education by those whose parents dropped out. Some have overcome that and see the importance of education, but I have many students who don't, because their parents are doing alright (though I bet things are worse than the students are aware of), so they can do the same thing too with only a high school education, or by dropping out altogether. They don't understand how different it is, but I, too, would love to see it quantified.

ldng 8y ago

Fascinating. I wonder if the reverse could be found. That is areas where educated "elites" were decimated and education level plummeted.