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Seeking the Roots of Terrorism By ALAN B KRUEGER and JITKA MALECKOV In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, a consensus quickly emerged that poverty and lack of education were major causes of terrorist acts and su pport for terrorism. Subscribing to that theory are politicians, journal ists, and many scholars, as well as officials responsible for administer ing aid to poor countries. For example, James D Wolfensohn, president o f the World Bank, asserted that the war on terrorism "will not be won un til we have come to grips with the problem of poverty and thus the sourc es of discontent." "We fight against poverty," George W Bush s aid in a speech in Monterrey, Mexico, "because hope is an answer to terr or. We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of educa tion and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrori sts can seize." At the other end of the political spectrum, Al Gore, at the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that the anger that underlies t errorism in the Islamic world stems from "the continued failure to thriv e, as rates of economic growth stagnate, while the cohort of unemployed young men under 20 continues to increase." For example, Elie Wi esel claimed, "Education is the way to eliminate terrorism." And the Nob el laureate Kim Dae Jung asserted, "At the bottom of terrorism is povert y" With such a strong and broad coalition in agreement, we asked, what evide nce links poverty and poor education to terrorism? Perhaps surprisingly, the relevant literature and the new evidence that we assembled challeng e the consensus. In a study we recently circulated as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, we considered support for, and parti cipation in, terrorism at both individual and national levels. Although the available data at the national level are weaker, both types of evide nce point in the same direction and lead us to conclude that any connect ion between poverty, education, and terrorism is, at best, indirect, com plicated, and probably quite weak. Some definitions, like the State Departm ent's, emphasize the "subnational," "clandestine" character of "politica lly motivated violence," while others include the state as a perpetrator . We have focused on substate terrorism because we believe that the root s of state-sponsored terrorism are substantially different. What's commo n to most definitions is the inclusion of terrorists' goal of inducing f ear in a target audience that transcends the physical harm caused to imm ediate victims, the ultimate purpose being persuasion. A large body of evidence exists on hate crimes, a close cousin to terrori sm. These are crimes against members of a religious, racial, or ethnic g roup selected solely because they are part of that group. Hate crimes ar e usually less orchestrated than terrorist acts, and thus a cleaner meas ure of the "pure supply" of those willing to carry out hateful acts. The effect of both terrorism and hate crimes is to wreak terror in a greate r number of people than those directly affected by the violence. Until r ecently, social scientists thought that economic deprivation was a cruci al determinant of hate crimes. However, after research by Donald P Gree n and his collaborators at Yale, a consensus is emerging in the social-s cience literature that the incidence of hate crimes, such as lynchings o f African-American people in the South, or violence against gay and lesb ian people in New York, bears little relation to economic conditions. About 10 percent of the 3,100 counties in the United States are currently home to a hate group such as the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Souther n Poverty Law Center. A study by the Swarthmore economists Philip N Jef ferson and Frederic L Pryor found that the likelihood that a hate group was located in a county was unrelated to the unemployment rate in the c ounty, and positively related to the education level in the county (that is, the higher the education level in the county, the greater the likel ihood of a hate group). Similarly, a study by one of us (Krueger) and J rn-Steffen Pischke, now of the London School of Economics and Political Science, found that in Germany, both the average education level and ave rage wage in the country's 543 counties were unrelated to the incidence of violence against foreigners occurring there. Neither cyclical downturns nor longer-term regional disparities in living standards appear to be correlated with the incidence of a wide range of hate crimes. That doesn't prove the absence of a causal relationship, o f course; but if there were a direct causal effect one would expect hate crimes to rise during periods of economic hardship. Rather than economi c conditions, the hate-crimes literature suggests that a breakdown in la w enforcement, and sanctioning and encouragement of civil disobedience, are significant causes. Turning to terrorism, public opinion polls can provide information on whi ch segments of the population support terrorist or militant activities. In December 2001, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, conducted a public-opinion poll of 1 ,357 Palestinians age 18 or older in the West Bank and Gaza on topics in cluding the September 11 attacks in the United States, support for an Is raeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and attacks against Israel. First, support for attacks against Israe li targets by the Palestinian population is widespread (from 74 percent to 90 percent, depending on the subgroup), though it is important to emp hasize that there is a distinction between support for attacks expressed in a poll at a particular moment and participation or active collusion in such attacks. Second, a majority, more than 60 percent of the populat ion surveyed, believes that attacks against Israeli civilians have helpe d to achieve Palestinian rights in a way that negotiations could not hav e These results offer no evidence that educated people are less supportive of attacks against Israeli targets. In fact, the support for attacks aga inst Israeli targets is higher among those with more than a secondary-sc hool education than among those with only an elementary-school education , and the support is considerably lower among those who are illiterate. The study showed also that support for attacks against Israeli targets is particularly strong among students, merchants, and professionals. Notab ly, the unemployed are somewhat less likely to support such attacks. If poverty were indeed the wellspring of support for terrorism or political ly motivated violence, one would have expected the unemployed to be more supportive of attacks than were merchants and professionals, but the ev idence points the other way. News reports often create the impression that Islam is a source of terror ism. Note, though, that suicide attacks are a relatively new, alien elem ent in the history of mainstream Islam. The Koran rejects suicide, and c lassical Islamic legal texts consider it a serious sin. True, a fighter who dies for faith or another noble cause is held in great esteem in bot h legal and cultural tradition, and those who die on the path of God are promised immediate recompense. Individuals or Islamic sects have used p olitical assassinations (including an 11th-century Shiite sect in Northe rn Iran, the corrupted nickname of which is the origin of the term "assa ssin"). Those fighters, however, did not commit suicide attacks. Also, s uicide attacks and other forms of terrorism have been carried out by peo ple belonging to other established religions, too, and by individuals pr ofessing no religious faith at all. Timothy McVeigh's heinous terrorist attack on American soil, for instance, cannot be linked to organized rel igion. To study the correlates of involvement in a terrorist organization more d irectly, we performed a detailed analysis of participation in Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a multifaceted organization that provides healt h and educational services, has a political wing, and is also believed t o engage in terrorism. The US State Department and British Home Office have both class...
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