What explains intensive kinship? Natural environment, religion, and the state

Luis Angeles and Aldo Elizalde

No 26-05, QUCEH Working Paper Series from Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History

Abstract: This paper studies the determinants of intensive kinship norms in human societies throughout the world. We expand the existing literature by considering three separate determinants of kinship intensity: the natural environment, religion, and state rule. Our novel methodology takes advantage of recent datasets, linking the location of human societies from the Ethnographic Atlas to geospatial data on the territorial span of states throughout human history. For religion, we find that Islam has an effect of similar magnitude but opposite direction to Christianity. For state rule, we find that only states with high levels of institutional development lead to less intensive kinship norms.

Keywords: kinship norms; natural environment; religion; Islam; Christianity; state rule; institutional development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 N40 O17 Q56 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:qucehw:341402

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