Sunday, September 07, 2008

Cantons of Switzerland, per capita GDP, language and religion   posted by Razib @ 9/07/2008 03:05:00 AM
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Update: Added populations.

Update: Added 1980 vintage language data. Note that Italians are the largest foreign population traditionally.

Update II: I tried to plot the 1980 language proportions against 2005 per capita income. I know, not kosher, but doesn't matter, almost none of the income variation can be accounted for by language variation (around 5%, with a slight positive relation between Germanity and wealth). Using the 1980 language data and 2005 per capita cantonal GDP the nominal per capita GDP would be 56,000 for German speakers and 51,000 for French speakers.

A commenter asked about Switzerland. I'd been meaning to look deeper into the issue for a long time, so I decided to give it a try. Below the fold are the Swiss Cantons organized by the variables you see in the title. I had to collect the information from various sources, explaining the obviously non-Anglicized names of some of the Cantons (I've just finished looking up the language and religious proportions in a somewhat time consuming manner, so I am not inclined to change the names since they're rather intelligible). I ran into some papers relating factors such as government expenditure and economic productivity and Protestantism, but I'll leave the data without comment and as a reference for readers. I also included a map below which can give you a sense of where the Cantons are and the distributed. One thing to note, several sources noted that in Switzerland Protestantism historically tended to be urban, which I thing goes a long way toward explaining what seems to be a difference in per capita GDP.

Canton Per capita* Language Religion Population German French Italian Romansch
Basle-Town 115178 German Protestant 193100 81 3 8
Zoug 93753 German Catholic 95100 87 1 7
Nidwald 73286 German Catholic 37200 94 1 2
Glaris 73236 German Protestant 38700 83
10
Zurich 68804 German Protestant 1181600 83 2 8
Geneve 62839 French Protestant, Catholic 396600 9 65 9
Schaffhouse 55126 German Protestant 73700 85 1 6
Basle-Land 53502 German Protestant 255300 85 2 7
Vaud 52901 French Protestant 608200 9 75 7
Schwyz 50170 German Catholic 125200 91
5
Neuchatel 49775 French 2/3 Protestant 165400 8 77 9
Grisons 49355 55% German, 30% Romansh, 15% Italian 1/2 Catholic, 1/2 Protestant 38700 60 1 13 22
Argovie 49209 German Mixed 579400



Soleure 46844 German 3/5 Catholic 241600 87 1 7
Appenzel Rh-I 45936 German Catholic 14900



Uri 45712 German Catholic 35800 91 1 4
Berne 45644 German, French Protestant 938600 84 8 4
Thurgovie 44918 German 2/3 Protestant 225400 87
7
St-Gall 44866 German Mixed 443900 89
5
Appenzell Rh-E 44215 German Protestant 54000 90
5
Lucerne 43910 German Catholic 342900 91 1 4
Tessin 39646 Italian Catholic 305600 11 2 84
Obwald 39559 German Catholic 31800 94 1 2
Valais 38385 2/3 French, 1/3 German Catholic 273400 32 61 3
Fribourg 38385 2/.3 French, 1/3 German Catholic 229900 32 61 3
Jura 38070 French Catholic 69222 9 86 4


* Nominal per capita GDP 20005, swiss franc

swiz.jpg

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