Abstract
At its core, this paper formalizes and tests a theory posing that the poor are poor because they do not work hard enough. I describe conceptual, theoretical, and empirical issues.
Summary Measures
Manager’s note: we are not posting all of this evaluators quantitative ratings and predictions as they did not seem to use our scales in the intended way. Their aggregate and overall normative ratings were very low, i.e., very negative.
Written report
Summary
In a series of papers in the 1960s, anthropologist George Foster introduced a “theory” of development based on what he called “the image of limited good”, which, for the purpose of this evaluation, can be summarized as follows. Zero-sum environments are more conducive to effort-suppressing beliefs, which in turn lead to less effort and subsequent economic development. The paper under evaluation, henceforth CBHNW, provides a theoretical representation of Foster’s hypothesis along with empirical tests in support of their theory.
CBHNW states that “by providing a formal theory that builds on Foster’s insights and testing its predictions, we establish a strong link between zero-sum thinking, demotivating beliefs, and economic activity in small-scale non-industrial societies as well as industrialized societies.” This would indeed contribute to our understanding of economic development. However, in this evaluation I argue that this paper fails to establish such a link—conceptually, theoretically, and empirically. Hence, CBHNW provides no contribution to our understanding of economic development. Instead, the significant amount of time and effort devoted to following Foster’s old ideas is a gloomy reminder that (some) research in economic development still builds on the idea that the poor are poor because they do not try hard enough.
Conceptual issues
CBHNW is based on George Foster’s ideas, which were received with much criticism even soon after publication in 1965 (Kennedy, 1966[1]; Acheson, 1972[2]; Acheson, 1974[3]). That is to say, my criticism is far from novel. CBHNW, however, does not acknowledge (nor engage with) this academic debate. If the aim of CBHNW is simply to “provide a theoretical representation of Foster’s hypothesis”, the remaining of this subsection is irrelevant; convincingly or not, they did it. I presume, however, that the goal of this rather comprehensive paper is more ambitious. Thus, I must start by discussing Foster’s ideas.
Let us start with some context. Foster was a relatively wealthy anthropologist from the United States, who developed his ideas, mostly, by interpreting what he saw, read, and heard about life in very small and poor villages in Mexico. From his necessarily skewed viewpoint in small villages in Mexico, he then made inferences towards “peasant societies” in general.
The first part of his argument is that “peasants” share a mindset in which “the cake” is fixed, which means that to get a larger piece, one must take it away from someone else. The second part of the argument is that this zero-sum environment leads to a “cognitive orientation” in which people avoid standing out since their success would be perceived as someone else’s downfall. The evidence in support of these arguments is, under the most generous interpretation, very weak. Instead, a critical reading of his work indicates that Foster had a preconceived idea in his mind, shaping a mold into which he would then squeeze his observations through far-fetched interpretations. For example, to support his idea of the “fixed cake” mindset of the “peasants”, Foster extends the idea to noneconomic aspects of life, leading to arguments such as that “a mother’s ability to love her children is viewed as limited by the amount of love she possesses” (Foster, 1965; p.298). He also states that “it is a truism that health is a ‘good’ that exists in limited quantities” (Foster, 1965; p.299), based on observations such as that “the loss of blood and semen is said to be considered permanently debilitating in some areas” (Kennedy, 1968); one wonders who is benefiting from the loss of blood and semen. In summary, there is much to be said about Foster’s work. My aim is not to critique his work in detail—that has been done since the 1960s—but it is useful to expose the weakness of the arguments leading to the foundation of the theory of economic development in CBHNW.
CBHNW stated goal forces the authors to be more precise than Foster, which leads to additional conceptual concerns. I present a selection. According to CBHNW, envy is an effort-suppressing belief. That is, people may choose to work less hard and accumulate less wealth to avoid the envy of their peers. Surprisingly, this is presented as a fact. To me, the opposite seems more likely; people may work harder in response to their own feelings of envy. Indeed, after a quick search, I was able to find research in favor of the role of envy as a motivator but not on its role as demotivator (e.g., Salerno et al., 2019[5]). Furthermore, I also found research on the evolutionary advantage provided by envy (Hill et al., 2011). The closest work in support of envy as demotivator is on people hiding their success for the sake of social harmony, which is not the same as suppressing effort (Arnett and Sidanius, 20183[6]). Thus, envy, which is the main belief explore is not even unequivocally effort-suppressing. The second effort-suppressing belief in CBHNW is witchcraft, which is the reductionist way chosen to describe “traditional religious beliefs”. More specifically, the authors refer to the “evil eye”, which is a fairly universal belief that people can harm other people by giving them a “bad look”—typically driven by envy. Critically, a belief in the evil eye does not necessarily lead to less effort, it suffices to hide the success. Finally, CBHNW deals with the degree of zero-sumness of the environment. It remains unclear, however, whether they refer to the actual environment or the perception of the environment. The theory implies the former, yet the empirics focus on the latter. Furthermore, there is an implicit assumption that all members of a given society are exposed to or perceive the same zero-sumness. In practice, the poor may rightfully feel like their environment is zero-sum, while the rich may feel the opposite. This heterogeneity may explain much of the empirical evidence presented in the paper.
Finally, CBHNW proposes a novel account to partly explain why the Global North is richer than the Global South. They argue, emphasis is mine, that
“Europe’s global expansion and colonialism after 1500 CE—including the Columbian Exchange—may have reduced zero-sum thinking through the emergence of new trading opportunities (..). an inflow of new technologies and resources, like new crops (…), fertilizers/guano (…), and stimulants like sugar, coffee, and tea (…), and a perception of limitless, though not unoccupied, land. Unleashed by colonialism and aided by the devastating impact of Eurasian diseases, this shock may have opened an exit ram from the trap to zero-sum thinking. According to our theory, such effects could have triggered a cultural shift to a less demotivating belief system accompanied by higher effort exertion and more learning-by-doing. This cultural shift could have ushered in technological breakthroughs and a transition to modern, intensive economic growth.” (p.45)
Let us take a minute to consider what this quote says. Europe’s colonialism, in which they grew richer by directly taking away from others, taught them that the world is not zero-sum—even if they were literally taking resources away from the local populations. This newfound realization led to a cultural shift in which they were less prone to hold demotivating beliefs, such as envy. With less envy, thus morally superior according to the christian tradition, Europe got a new powerful work ethic. Finally, through hard work, Europe got richer. Yes. Somehow, CBHNW argues that the “Great Divergence” stems from Europe’s industrious nature instead of their loot. The implication being that the Global South is poor because they did not work hard enough, not because Europeans brought diseases that wiped out the many advanced societies that existed in, for example, America.
Let me be clear, the poor are not poor because they do not try hard enough. To the skeptical reader, I propose the following thought experiment. Suppose there is a community with 100 residents all with similar wealth. One day, one half of the residents take the other half’s property, resources, and labor with no legal consequences. Five generations later everyone is relatively free and living under a common rule of law in the same community. Naturally, the descendants of the sacked half are significantly poorer. Would the origin of the great divergence be a mystery? No, the origin is the “exchange” five generations ago.
Theoretical issues
Given the conceptual issues listed in the previous subsection, I do not see the value of formalizing Foster’s ideas. For those who may see some value, I provide a brief critique of the theory taking the premise as given.
CBHNW claims that “Evolutionary models are underutilized in economics”. This is not a positive but a normative statement, which may explain the authors’ modeling choice as a preference. Beyond this sign and the stated importance “to have theory (and predictions) in a setting where values and beliefs are in motion and not assumed to be fixed or in some stable equilibrium” (p.2), there is no additional discussion on the appropriateness of their modeling choice.
My concern is the way in which players interact with each other, that is, through production in matched pairs. This type of interaction, while convenient for an evolutionary model, implies a rather strange institutional framework. Presumably, in the small-scale economies in Foster’s study-sites, there was a substantial degree of subsistence farming and some local markets. Today, most people interact in a market. Without a convincing discussion on the ways in which the chosen evolutionary model is a good approximation to more realistic scenarios, it is hard to interpret the scope of the theoretical predictions. In its current form, every prediction should be qualified by “assuming paired production”.
Empirical issues
The empirical section of the paper aims to test the predictions from the theory, which I have argued is set on an unrealistic framework of paired production. What we may learn from these tests about the actual world remains an open question. Here, I limit myself to point out a few issues in the empirical section.
There is significant subjectivity in the way in which abstract concepts are represented. For example, the validation exercise (p.24) reveals that seemingly minor differences in the zero-sum index can lead to radically different views of the world, which begs the question on whether the index is truly capturing the abstract concept. Here, it may be useful to present the distribution of the index, which is only present for the cross-country data.
Effort is the key variable linking development with beliefs in the theory, yet there is no true measure of effort. Instead, CBHNW argues that education is a good proxy. That is simply not true, the best predictor of a person’s education level is simply the parents’ education level. Hence, the empirics are missing the key link to development.
The theory implies a causal story, yet all empirics rely on association.
In page 20, the statements are presented in pairs, but it is not clear whether one of each pair is randomly presented. If so, it would be useful to see results by type of framing. I would, for example, expect a very different answer from “Gaining happiness requires taking it away from others” and “It is possible for everyone to be happy”.
Also related to the statements starting in page 20 used to build the zero-sum index, the first statement in each pair seems driven by envy, which means that the regression of the envy and the zero-sum index is simply showing that more envious people are more likely to have envious views. This type of open interpretation is common to most regression.
In page 32, “The second measure captures the respondent’s view of whether the poor can escape poverty through effort: ‘In your opinion, do most poor people in this country have a change of escaping from poverty, or is there very little change of escaping?’”. I note that nowhere in the question is there any reference to effort.
Table 4, every variable is a proxy for income, which again is better predicted by parents’ income. As I mentioned elsewhere, given the high levels of inequality throughout the world, it is feasible for the poor to perceive the world as zero-sum, while the rich perceive the world as non-zero-sum. Perhaps the authors can run robustness tests ruling out the effect of inequality.
Figure 5 and 6. The hump shape can also be explained by ex-post rationalization. In Figure 6, for example, the poorest decile worked hard, and it did not pay off, thus, work does not bring success. For the richest decile, it is convenient to belief that their standing comes from work instead of the most likely scenario, they were born into the richest decile in the first place.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, I do not see a way to make this paper better. It is a shame that so much time and effort was spent for the sake of Foster’s patronizing ideas.
References
[1]Kennedy, J. G. (1966). “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good”: A Critique 1. American Anthropologist, 68(5), 1212-1225.
[2]Acheson, J. M. (1972). Limited Good or Limited Goods? Response to Economic Opportunity in a Tarascan Pueblo. American Anthropologist, 74(5), 1152-1169.
[3]Acheson, J. M. (1974). Reply to George Foster. American Anthropologist, 76(1), 57-62.
[4]Hill, S. E., DelPriore, D. J., & Vaughan, P. W. (2011). The cognitive consequences of envy: attention, memory, and self-regulatory depletion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 101(4), 653.
[5]Salerno, A., Laran, J., & Janiszewski, C. (2019). The bad can be good: When benign and malicious envy motivate goal pursuit. Journal of Consumer Research, 46(2), 388-405.
[6]Arnett, R. D., & Sidanius, J. (2018). Sacrificing status for social harmony: Concealing relatively high status identities from one’s peers. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 147, 108-126.
Evaluator details
How long have you been in this field?
How many proposals and papers have you evaluated?
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
