Sudipta Sarangi Speaks on Test Performance and Rice-Farming Cultures

Sudipta Sarangi, Professor and Head of the Department of Economics as well as PPE Stakeholder, will give a talk (joint work with Suqin Ge) with the title “People from Historically Rice Growing Areas Do Better on Tests.”

The talk will take place on February 25, 2026, from 4-5:30pm, in the Assembly Hall of the Holtzman Alumni Center.

The talk is tailored to appeal to both faculty and students, with plenty of time for discussion and interaction with the guest speaker. You are cordially invited to attend.

Here is the abstract of the talk: Why do some countries do so much better than other countries in education? Resources are an obvious explanation. Genes for IQ are a controversial explanation. We argue that cultural differences in valuing hard work are an important factor. To test this idea, we studied paddy rice farming because it required about twice the labor of other common crops like wheat and corn. Historians have documented traditions in rice-farming cultures that celebrate hard work, such as festivals to get energized for periods of hard work. We found that cultures with a history of rice farming scored higher on standardized tests across countries. Differences remained even when we compared students in the same countries but with parents born in other cultures. One limitation is that much rice farming is in East Asia, which raises the question of whether the differences are due to some other aspect of East Asian culture. We took advantage of the fact that China has both rice-farming and wheat-farming regions. Students who were born in rice-farming counties outperformed students from wheat counties in a large, nationally representative Chinese sample. Rice areas also outperformed wheat areas in the imperial exam during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Finally, we tested differences in attitudes toward hard work. People in rice-farming cultures or who have parents from rice-farming cultures endorsed hard work more. Together, these results highlight culture as an enduring influence on educational performance.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten days before the event.

(Photography by Holly Belcher for Virginia Tech)