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.
