Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13865
Authors: Antonela Miho; Alexandra Jarotschkin; Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
Abstract: We study horizontal between-group cultural transmission using Stalin's ethnic deportations as a historical experiment. Over 2 million Soviet citizens, mostly Germans and Chechens, were forcibly relocated from the western to eastern parts of the USSR during WWII solely based on ethnicity. As a result, the native population of the deportation destinations was exogenously exposed to groups with drastically different gender norms and behavior. We combine historical and contemporary data to document that present-day gender equality in labor force participation, business leadership, and fertility as well as pro-gender-equality attitudes are higher among local native population of deportation destinations with a larger presence of Protestant compared to Muslim deportees. The effects are stronger for culturally closer groups and when adopting deportee norms is less costly. The results cannot be explained by selection, vertical cultural transmission, or deportee impact on the local economy. The evidence strongly suggests that gender norms diffused horizontally from deportees to the local population through imitation and learning.
Keywords: horizontal cultural transmission; gender norms; deportations; Stalin
JEL Codes: P00; M14; N34; N35; Z12; Z13; J15; N44
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Protestant deportees (J15) | gender equality outcomes (J16) |
| Protestant deportees (J15) | female labor force participation (FLFP) (J21) |
| Protestant deportees (J15) | presence of female directors in firms (J21) |
| Protestant deportees (J15) | fertility rates (J13) |
| horizontal cultural transmission (Z13) | gender equality outcomes (J16) |
| vertical transmission of norms to deportee descendants (F24) | gender equality outcomes (J16) |