Religion and politics: understanding the effects of conservative origins on contemporary patterns of sub-national relative human development

Understanding the effects of historical circumstance on contemporary development patterns is important in understanding the overall trajectories of societies. Using a spatially centered technique and various sources of historical and contemporary data, this link is tested by examining variations in historical levels of conservative values in the American South on contemporary patterns of development. This context provides an interesting case study involving a time and region marked by rapid social change. Results show that the spatial distribution of development levels is non-random and that historical levels of highly conservative values are associated with lower levels of contemporary development.