Why Warm Countries Are Poorer

Summary

Today I bring you what I think is a ground-breaking article. I have never seen this theory anywhere. I hope you find it as exciting as I do!Societies that live closer to the equator are warmer. Why are they also poorer?Here’s the average GDP per capita compared to latitude:Source: Tomas Pueyo for Uncharted Territories, with data from The world by latitudes: A global analysis of human population, development level and environment across the north–south axis over the past half century, Kummu & Varis, 2010And here’s more quantified data:If you look at the countries that are close to the equator and are rich, they are all clearly outliers. They’re almost all microstates. Singapore (SGP) and Hong Kong (HKG) have tons of air conditioning, GNQ (Equatorial Guinea) has plenty of oil, Seychelles (SYC), Barbados (BRB), the UAE (ARE), Puerto Rico (PRI) are all microstates too...The debate has raged for centuries with a racist undertone:Those who live in a cold climate are full of spirit.—Greek philosopher Aristotle, 350 BC.There are countries where the excess of heat enervates the body and renders men slothful and dispirited.—Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1750.As we will see, a lot of the more recent academic research points at worse institutions, laziness, difficulty to sweat, lack of frost, diseases…But there’s one theory that I haven’t seen anywhere yet, and that I think is crucial to explain the majority of this phenomenon. So today, I’d like to review what people think causes warm countries to be poorer, and then explain why this other factor is so crucial.In Bali, me and my friends would all go into an idle state without realizing itYou just sit in cafes and restaurants (most don’t have AC there) and doing nothing, just hanging aroundThen you’d enter an AC’d cafe (few), and after half an hour you’d wake up from standby modeYou have ideas again, and ambition is backYou wouldn’t even realize you get into this idle slow state but your brain goes on power save mode with th...