People from cultures that emphasize productive habits tend to advance. The reverse is also true.
Culture is one of the most underrated ideas in economics. For decades, economists avoided invoking culture—the shared values, norms, beliefs, preferences and behaviors of a group—as an explanation for economic outcomes. It seemed too intangible to measure, too messy to model.
Thomas Sowell, whose legacy was celebrated recently at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, changed that. He was among the first economists to treat culture as an important economic variable. Mr. Sowell has argued that both human capital and culture drive mobility—more so, in his view, than discrimination or external barriers. Groups that develop productivity-enhancing traits such as skills, an orientation toward education and work, and thriftiness tend to advance. Those whose cultures don’t emphasize these things tend to fall behind. In Mr. Sowell’s view, culture is a form of capital, an accumulation of habits and know-how that powerfully influences a group’s progress.
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Roland G. Fryer, Jr., a John A. Paulson Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is Professor of Economics at Harvard University, an entrepreneur, and co-founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures.
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