Christianization with social mobility but without economic development: Evidence from missions in Ghana

Christianization without economic development: Evidence from missions in Ghana. Remi Jedwab, Felix Meier zu Selhausen, Alexander Moradic. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 190, October 2021, Pages 573-596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.07.015

Abstract: One of the most powerful cultural transformations of the 20th century has been the dramatic expansion of Christianity outside of Europe. This unique historical process was facilitated by vast Christian missionary efforts. In this paper, we study the economic effects of Christian missions in Ghana. We rely on six distinct identification strategies that exploit exogenous variations in Christian missionary expansion from 1828 to 1932. We find no association between Christian missions, whether Protestant, Catholic, Presbyterian or Methodist, and local economic development, whether during contemporary or colonial times. However, some results suggest that Christian missions might have had a positive effect on human capital formation. There might thus be contexts in which missions promoted human capital accumulation without this necessarily translating into local economic development.

Keywords: Economics of religionReligious diffusionPath dependenceLong-term economic developmentChristian missionsChristianityAfrica

7. Concluding remarks

One century of Christianization has transformed Ghana’s religious landscape. In 2017, about 80% of the Ghanaian population were Christians. Conversion came at the expense of traditional religious beliefs. In this paper, we established that spatial historical patterns of Christianity persist to the present-day. We then found a positive correlation between Christianity today and measures of economic development today, even after controlling for an extensive set of factors that might help account for endogeneity in mission placement.

Using six distinct identification strategies that exploit possibly exogenous variations (natural experiments) in Christian missionary expansion, we then did not find much evidence for a positive effect of Christianity on economic development in Ghana. These results are broadly consistent across Christian denominations (i.e. Protestantism, Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Methodism), which reinforces our main takeaways and addresses external validity concerns.

It could well be that Christians in Africa are among the most skilled and wealthiest members of society when compared to other individuals within their communities (Alesina et al., 2020, Meier zu Selhausen, van Leeuwen, Weisdorf, 2018, Wantchekon, Novta, Klašnja, 2015). But the fact that Christianization might have increased social mobility does not automatically generate economic activity. The private returns of being a Christian – which may include increased human capital – might have been larger than its actual social returns. Indeed, in a seminal study, Pritchett (2001) pointed out that rapidly rising educational attainment rates in post-independence Africa have failed to translate into learning and sustained economic growth at the macro level. Some aspects of Christianization might have also hampered economic development, for example by promoting social upheaval, and thus lowering interpersonal trust, in missionized communities (Okoye, 2021). Likewise, religiosity can increase religious participation at the expense of labor supply and economic production (Barro, McCleary, 2003, Campante, Yanagizawa-Drott, 2015).

Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming the new global center of Christianity (Pew Research Center, 2015). Our analysis for Ghana suggests that continued Christian conversion might not necessarily promote economic development on the continent.