TITLE:
The Influence of Clan Surname Diversity on County Economic Development Performance in China: An Empirical Study Based on Chinese Genealogy Data
AUTHORS:
Huiyun Zhang
KEYWORDS:
Clan Surnames, Cultural Diversity, Economic Development Performance
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.10 No.4,
April
9,
2019
ABSTRACT: Culture is considered to be a deep-seated factor affecting
economic development, among which the economic impact of cultural diversity has
attracted considerable attention. At the county level, clans play an important
cultural and social role. Although traditional clans in China are influenced by
Confucianism, different clans have different cultural inheritance. Genealogy,
ancestral precepts and clan rules are the
carriers of each clan’s ideological inheritance. Different clans are
distinguished by surnames, and cultural backgrounds and concepts are quite
diverse. This paper will examine the impact of this diversity on the
performance of county economic development. This paper collects the data of the
Chinese Genealogy published by the Shanghai Library, collates and constructs
the number of clan surnames and the diversity index of clan surnames in 1087
counties, and uses the night light brightness data released by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to measure the economic
development performance of counties in China. Empirical results show that the
diversity of clan surnames has a significant positive impact on the performance
of county economic development, which remains stable in the test. The more
diverse the clan surnames are, the better the economic development performance
of counties will be.