FLICKR, KEVIN BRIODY Economists at Brown University and Williams College published a paper in this month’s issue of the American Economic Review suggesting that genetic diversity can be linked to economic development and success. Even before the study was published, however, a group of geneticists and anthropologists from Harvard University questioned how the genetic data were applied, and recently published their critique of the work in Current Anthropology.
The thrust of the economists’ claim is that there a sweet spot in terms of the amount of genetic diversity in human populations that leads to economic development. Too much or too little diversity, they say, results in poverty. Specifically, they write that “the low diversity of Native American populations and the high diversity of African populations have been detrimental for the [economic] development of these regions,” and that “the intermediate levels of diversity associated with European and Asian populations have been conducive for development.”
In their critique, the Harvard group laid out a list of flaws in the data and the researchers’ approach, claiming, for example, that the economists used an inaccurate proxy for genetic diversity of a population. In addition, the Harvard group ...
