The Origins of Cultural Divergence: Evidence from a Developing Country

Cultural norms diverge substantially across societies, even within the same country. The present paper examines the voluntary settlement hypothesis, proposing that individualistic people tend to self-select into migrating out from collectivist societies toward the frontier areas, and that such patterns of historical migration are reflected even in the current distribution of norms. Gaining independence in 939 CE after 1000 years of Chinese colonization, historical Vietnam occupied the region that is now north Vietnam with a collectivist social organization. From the 11th to the 18th centuries, historical Vietnam gradually expanded its territory southward to the Mekong River Delta through various waves of conquest and migration. Combining findings from household survey and lab-in-the-field experiment, we demonstrate that areas annexed earlier to historical Vietnam are currently more prone to a collectivist culture. Relying on many historical accounts, together with various checks and tests, we show that the dominant mechanism behind this finding is the southward out-migration of individualistic people during the territorial expansion.