Daily Speculations
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Daily Speculations |
4-Jun-2006
Equatorial Regression, from
Kim Zussman
Mr. Highland's comments about Latin American poverty related to parasitic diseases got me to wondering if it is true that tropical nations are poorer, and why. Seems like many of the poorest nations are clustered along earth's waistband, and maybe all the political explanations are largely hand-waving along the lines of how much personality is due to genes vs. upbringing.
As a check, this source lists latitude of prominent cities of many countries of the world. A back of the envelope average of latitude for the cities was taken as the country latitude. The absolute value of latitude was used as it disregards north and south, but gives relative distance from the equator. Then looked up GDP/capita of corresponding countries courtesy of the CIA.This data was used to regress GDP/capita vs. |LAT|:
The regression equation is GDP/CAP = - 169 + 458 LAT Predictor Coef SE Coef T P Constant -169 1595 -0.11 0.916 LAT 458.23 49.35 9.29 0.000 S = 8512.40 R-Sq = 46.1% R-Sq(adj) = 45.5%
Nations wealth goes up very significantly as you get further from the equator. Here is the scatter plot which shows the relationship. Can't see parasites here, but it would seem unlikely that the same bugs would infect equatorial Africa as do Latin America. Another hypothesis would be that hot climates make for lack of industry (personally and societal), and this could be tested using (say) average temperatures of various countries.
Other interesting features are seen in the data itself (columns are country, |lat|, and GDP/capita, respectively):
Country LAT GDP/CAP Ecuador 1 $3,700 Kenya 1 $1,100 Singapore 1 $27,800 Somalia 2 $600 Congo, Republic of the 4 $800 Malaysia 4 $9,700 French Guiana 5 $8,300 Ghana 5 $2,300 Colombia 6 $6,600 Liberia 6 $900 Nigeria 6 $1,000 Suriname 6 $4,300 Guyana 7 $3,800 Indonesia 7 $3,500 Sri Lanka 7 $4,000 Tanzania 7 $700 Panama 9 $6,900 Papua New Guinea 9 $2,200 Ethiopia 10 $800 Cambodia 11 $2,000 Trinidad and Tobago 11 $10,500 Venezuela 11 $5,800 Nicaragua 12 $2,300 Peru 12 $5,600 El Salvador 13 $4,900 Yemen 13 $800 Guatemala 14 $4,200 Honduras 14 $2,800 Philippines 14 $5,000 Senegal 14 $1,700 Thailand 14 $8,100 Martinique 15 $14,400 Sudan 15 $1,900 Bolivia 16 $2,600 Belize 17 $6,500 Burma 18 $1,700 Dominican Republic 18 $6,300 Haiti 18 $1,500 Puerto Rico 18 $17,700 Vietnam 18 $2,700 Madagascar 19 $800 Brazil 20 $8,100 Cuba 20 $3,000 Mexico 20 $9,600 Bangladesh 22 $2,000 Hong Kong 22 $34,200 India 22 $3,100 Saudi Arabia 23 $12,000 Taiwan 23 $25,300 Bahamas, The 25 $17,700 Paraguay 25 $4,800 Nepal 27 $1,500 South Africa 27 $11,100 Australia 30 $30,700 China 30 $5,600 Egypt 30 $4,200 Pakistan 30 $2,200 Argentina 31 $12,400 Israel 32 $20,800 Jordan 32 $4,500 Libya 32 $6,700 Bermuda 33 $36,000 Morocco 33 $4,200 Syria 33 $3,400 Afghanistan 34 $800 Chile 34 $10,700 Iraq 34 $2,100 Lebanon 34 $5,000 Iran 35 $7,700 Uruguay 35 $14,500 Algeria 36 $6,600 Gibraltar 36 $27,900 Tunisia 37 $7,100 Greece 38 $21,300 Korea, South 38 $19,200 Turkey 38 $7,400 Portugal 39 $17,900 Japan 40 $29,400 New Zealand 40 $23,200 Spain 40 $23,300 United States 40 $40,100 Italy 42 $27,700 Bulgaria 43 $8,200 Romania 44 $7,700 Hungary 47 $14,900 Switzerland 47 $33,800 Austria 48 $31,300 France 48 $28,700 Czech Republic 50 $16,800 Germany 50 $28,700 Poland 50 $12,000 Belgium 51 $30,600 Netherlands 52 $29,500 Ireland 53 $31,900 United Kingdom 53 $29,600 Russia 55 $9,800 Denmark 56 $32,200 Canada 60 $31,500 Finland 60 $29,000 Norway 60 $40,000 Sweden 60 $28,400 Greenland 61 $20,000 Iceland 64 $31,900
Near the top are the low latitudes, and notice that Singapore is an outlier (high GDP, low lat), and if you stroll down Taiwan and Hong Kong don't fit well with their collats. At the other end with high latitudes and usually high GDPs, Russia and her former bloc states stick out where they don't belong.
So another hypothesis is that national wealth results from equatorial distance, provided you don't have 72 years of socialism or the asian wild card (ie, wherever they are they do well). And an investment thesis, assuming global warming keeps going, is to buy that little tike some future Goldilocks acreage in northern Canada or Alaska where it will be not too hot or cold.