On the Road to Heaven: Self-Selection, Religion, and Socioeconomic Status*
ON THE ROAD TO HEAVEN: SELF-SELECTION, RELIGION, AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS* Mohamed Saleh† December 2, 2015 Abstract Inter-religion socioeconomic differences are often attributed to a causal impact of religion. Instead, I trace the phenomenon in Egypt to selection-on-socioeconomic- status during Egypt’s conversion from Coptic Christianity to Islam since the Arab Conquest in 641. Self-selection was driven by a regressive poll tax removed upon conversion to Islam that was imposed in 641-1856. Using novel primary data sources, I document that (a) long-term trends of poll tax and conversions are consistent with the selection hypothesis and (b) districts with a higher tax in 641- 1100 had relatively fewer, but differentially better-off, Copts in 1848-1868. I specify persistence mechanisms of tax effects. Keywords: discriminatory taxation; intergenerational persistence; conversion; self- selection; endogenous group formation JEL Classification: N35; O15 * Special thanks go to Dora Costa, Leah Boustan, Jeffrey Nugent, and Jean Tirole, for their advice and support. I benefited from conversations with Ragui Assaad, Eric Chaney, Thomas Chaney, Gregory Clark, Jacques Crémer, Joseph Ferrie, Avner Greif, Christian Hellwig, Timur Kuran, Naomi Lamoreaux, Thierry Magnac, Joel Mokyr, Dimitris Pipinis, Paul Seabright, Stéphane Straub, Martin Weidner, and numerous colleagues at TSE and IAST. The attendees of my presentations at UCLA, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, Stanford, Northwestern, Yale, Oxford, TSE, IAST, PSE, LSE, SITE-SSE, AEA, ASREC, AALIMS, NES, All-UC Group in Economic History, and Asian Historical Economics Conference, all provided me with very useful comments. Funds for digitization of the nineteenth- century Egyptian census samples came from IPUMS, EHA, and USC, whereas the digitization of the various medieval data sources was funded by USC and IAST.
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