northern italian regions or southern italian regions? what do you think?
stolen from zero hedge:
hmmmm. now where have i seen this north-south divide in italy before? oh yeah!:
– Mapping the 2009 Pisa Results for Spain and Italy – @a reluctant apostate
– Chalk and cheese – @those who can see (come back to us m.g.! =( )
– inbreeding in italy
– democracy in italy
– more nepotism in southern than in northern italy…
– news from italy
(note: comments do not require an email. lombardy.)
hbd chick 
What the…why is Lombardia so monumentally richer than everybody else, including all of the other Northern Italian provinces?
@ihtg – “What the…why is Lombardia so monumentally richer than everybody else….”
those clever long-beards! (~_^)
dunno.
According to the Italy maps in Those Who Can See links, Northern Italy leaned Republic, Fascist, and Socialist at their respective movements while Southern Italy leaned Monarchist. Inbreeding vs outbreeding? ;) I take it I am very late to the party right?
@campofthesaints – “I take it I am very late to the party right?”
never fear! the party is ongoing — 24/7. and the mini-bar’s fully stocked. (~_^)
@campofthesaints – “According to the Italy maps in Those Who Can See links, Northern Italy leaned Republic, Fascist, and Socialist at their respective movements while Southern Italy leaned Monarchist. Inbreeding vs outbreeding? ;)”
hmmm. dunno. if there’s a pattern there, i can’t see it. -?-
Well, yes, but how is this directly relevant to HBD? One can just as easily ascribe this to northern regions being richer than the southern ones. Most countries have transfers from rich provinces to poorer ones.
What would be an interesting exercise, however, would be to see if tax collection in the south underperforms the north even after accounting for its poorer status.
@anatoly – “how is this directly relevant to HBD?”
it’s a matter of cumulative circumstantial evidence (i.e. see all the other links).
@anatoly – “What would be an interesting exercise, however, would be to see if tax collection in the south underperforms the north even after accounting for its poorer status.”
go for it! (~_^)
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Discovery of DNA
This is probably due to IQ differences that are in line with your pet theory, although there are other factors too, like influx from Africa and the Middle East. And there are some notable exceptions to the pattern. According to Lynn’s study Friuli and Trentino are really smart regions but they don’t seem to be doing well according to the map above. Funny note, Friulians are almost as tall as Swedes!
Here is Lynn in case anyone’s interested: link [pdf].
Friuli and Trentino are autonomous (because of ethnic minorities) and therefore keep all or most of their local tax revenue.
@Anonymous, thanks for clarifying. Their low unemployment rates also suggest that they might be doing better than I thought.
@Staffan: I understand they’re doing very well (like other regions in the Alps).
I read somewhere recently that the Lombards were originally a Germanic tribe that got driven over the Alps, where they settled. Are there any other regions in Italy with populations like that?
@luke – “Are there any other regions in Italy with populations like that?”
uh … the ostrogoths were in italy for a while. wikipedia says they were “absorbed” by the lombards at some point. there were also the vandals down in sicily. dunno if there were any others.
This split does seem to correspond with the old maps of Italy for the post-Western Empire fall with Theoderic’s Gothic state and Lombards to the North, and then the Islamic Saracens making their way to Sicily and the southern 1/3 of Italy for a couple hundred years. That was followed by the Norman invasion, and Byzantine client states that kicked out the Muslims. It’s not just the genes, but consider the warring back and forth when areas are constantly under siege or fought over for decades if not centuries. Raids along the coast from just about every group I listed above did not help.
Check out the Maps from wikipedia in the Islam in Southern Italy chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Islam_in_southern_Italy
Lombardy is far more populous than any other province in Italy, with more than double the pop. of any other province in the north, a chart of per capita tax instead of total contribution would not show such a dramatic difference
all of the Nationalists who created Italy were northerners, the southerners were not interested in becoming a nation-state and were forced into the arrangement by being conquered. so if not for their power-hungry ancestors the northerners would not be dishing out all their money to lazy southerners, because they never wanted to be Italians in the first place. another way of looking at it is that controlling the whole peninsula was necessary for Italy’s national security, and floating a bunch of southerners on welfare is the price they pay for that.
the results are kind of similar to another, contemporaneous coflict, the Americn Civil War, when the southerners were prevented from leaving the Union, only to hear 150 years of complaints about their economic backwardsness, plus chauvinistic hostility. listen you maniacs, they didn’t want to be a part of your great nation in the first place, you could have actually let them go instead of forcing your W.E.I.R.D. beliefs on every single society on earth… which no one ever asked for or wanted
I don’t think you can say it all goes back to ancient patterns of settlement. Whereas poor communications with (and within) Sicily disadvantaged the development of civil society and commerce, North Italy has a far better location: abutting prosperous regions of other countries.. In a single country, especially with a single currency, industry, jobs and wealth must flow to the most connected areas. Moreover, regions favourable for commerce would tend to favour the reproduction of the economically successful over others, thereby causing the population of prosperous regions to become even less like that of peripheral ones, as an economically successful hereditary middle class grew out of proportion of the rest of the population. North Italy is like a bit like south east England.
@sean – “North Italy has a far better location: abutting prosperous regions of other countries.”
but sicily is just a short boat ride away from tunisia and other north african countries, so by your logic it should be very prosperous indeed. oh, wait … for some reason tunisia isn’t very prosperous. hmmmm….
Proximity to the North African slave raiders (who were active until the early 19th century) hardly helped the economic development of Med.coastal areas. Even if they had started out with exactly the same population, north Italy would be way more prosperous by now, due to expansion of the economically successful, and migration of enterprising people away from the south. In UK Scotland gets more than it contributes by way of taxes.
@sean – “Proximity to the North African slave raiders (who were active until the early 19th century) hardly helped the economic development of Med.coastal areas. Even if they had started out with exactly the same population, north Italy would be way more prosperous by now, due to expansion of the economically successful, and migration of enterprising people away from the south.”
you’re mentioning only a few proximate causes/explanations here. you’re failing to get to any ultimate causes, afaics.
Perhaps, but different locations may mean different intensity of culture evolution for placing trust in non-relatives. So if you want to ascribe causality to a separate factor you have to justify discounting the influence of location factors by determining their influence. Only 12% of Scots are net contributors to the UK economy because they are a peripheral region in a single market (The whole of Britain becomes a peripheral region in an EU single market). Large areas of north Italy are extremely prosperous, and comparable to neighbouring Switzerland, on paper at least.
It’s not just location and population, but also environment. Northern Italy has the fertile Po Valley for farming, and water from the Alps to power industry, whereas the South has rough dry terrain and very few resources:
– Geography and North-South Disparities
– Resources and Industry in the North
Also, official figures for income and unemployment in the South are inaccurate:
– Southern Italy’s Economy Underestimated
Btw, not only are PISA tests not IQ tests, but the differences between North and South are decreasing due to improvements in schooling:
– PISA Test Score Gap Closing
[edit: sorry. your comment was stuck in the spam box. i think it must be ’cause of the number of links, but i thought i had it set to ignore that…. – h.chick]
@bleach – “listen you maniacs, they didn’t want to be a part of your great nation in the first place….”
ha! that made me laugh. (^_^)
What the fuck is a ‘tax’?
@uh – “What the f*ck is a ‘tax’?”
“tax – noun, often attributive
a: a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes
b: a sum levied on members of an organization to defray expenses”
(~_^)
seriously, i don’t know what taxes were included in this little study. you’ll have to check back on zero hedge or eurostat.