Why are people from rice-farming areas less happy than those from wheat-farming areas?

A list of the most interesting academic and popular articles that came to our attention this week...

Praying for Rain. José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez and colleagues find that ethnic groups living in areas where the hazard of rain is increasing after a dry spell are more likely to pray for rain. For such groups, praying for rain actually correlates with the incidence of rainfall, since people tend to pray when they most want rain.

IQ and Income Inequality in a Sample of Sibling Pairs from Advantaged Family Backgrounds. In a classic article from 2002, Charles Murray studies differences in outcomes between sibling pairs where one has a much higher IQ than the other. He shows that these differences are just as large when the sample is restricted to siblings raised in two-parent families above the poverty line.

The utopian sample comprises siblings raised in two-parent families above the poverty line.

Is El Salvador the safest country in Latin America? Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, recently claimed that his is now the “safest country in Latin America”. Noah looked into this claim: based on the latest homicide data, there’s good reason to believe it’s true.