Testing the Protestant Ethic thesis with quantitative historical data: A research note”. Social Forces 89(3

We provide a test of the thesis that Protestantism influenced the development of modern capitalism by using quantitative data from 1500 through 1870. Results show that during this period the percentage of a country’s population that is Protestant is unrelated to both its level of per capita GDP and the average rate of its annual growth in per capita GDP. We conclude that the thesis that the Protestant ethic has been an important factor in the growth of modern capitalism is not supported. Max Weber’s thesis of the influence of Protestantism on capitalism is one of the great ideas in sociology, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism very likely being one of the two or three most frequently discussed books in sociology’s entire history. Most sociologists seem to accept it, albeit in some cases in modified form, but it has also been subjected to harsh criticism. Even in the first years after its publication it was con-troversial. Early critiques were made by Werner Sombart (1915), R.H. Tawney (1926), and H.M. Robertson (1935). Somewhat later, Kurt Samuelsson (1957) weighed in with a detailed critique that some considered devastating. The most comprehensive attempt to evaluate the thesis was made by Jere Cohe