I've often theorized that what we call "American exceptionalism" (and similarly Canadian, Australian, and New Zealandese) is made up of the fact these countries are very heavily populated with early-generation, by-choice immigrants.

The population was effectively self-selected for those ambitious enough to emigrate, and in many areas, tame a new frontier and/or start businesses. They were then dumped in an environment highly supportive to it (cheap land and natural resources, rapid technical advancement providing huge vistas of economic opportunity) That probably has a significant ripple effect for a few generations. (The "Grandpa had to swim across the Atlantic and learn English and sweep floors to get started, so he's going to ride his kids to make sure they get the most of their education" pattern)

On the other hand, I suspect there's some toxic counterfactors in that; the celebration of bootstrap-pullers tends to encourage "I've got mine" attitudes and may end up underserving parts of the community that would benefit from more social support and community services.

Not Australia. That was a penal colony.

I suspect there was a point where the immigrant mix turned by-choice though.

Not a historian, but I believe this wouldn't have been until either the good rush of post-war migration boom. Either way, several generations after the convicts first arrived.

I would really love a link to that paper. A quick google search didn't turn up what I was looking for.

I'm quite sure I'll never see it again. I save papers relevant to my profession and hobbies, and US crime statistics are neither.

I did manage to dredge this link up, which says that in 1973, Minnesota had the lowest high school drop-out rate in the nation, and the third-lowest crime after Iowa and Maine.

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/08/12_cu...

Which is no smoking gun, but is suggestive. I'm sure someone could do a deep dive on academic literature in criminology and turn it up, but it won't be me I'm afraid.

There are a few possibilities, right?

- I'm making it up. I'm not, but that would just be taking my word for it twice.

- It's true, and completely random. Seems unlikely.

- It's true, and Scandinavians have a magic low-crime blood factor, perhaps it adheres to the blond gene, next to the lutefisk-appreciation gene. That would be weird, huh? Not necessarily racist, but weird.

- It's true, and Scandinavian Americans have cultural continuity with their brethren in the home countries. That's pretty boring and normal, so this is the one I picked.

- It's true, and due to the Aryan superiority of the Nordic white race, which we must preserve so they can continue to dominate the swarthy people of the world.

You picked that one, not me. I think it's absurd.

I enjoy hypothesis generation so (with no judgment implied), here’s another:

- historical coincidence caused subgroup migration from those regions at the time, and there is cultural continuity with that subgroup

After all, Indian Americans are a remarkably tiny high-median-income, low-crime ethnic subgroup in America.

I can see how it could be interpreted that way. My first reaction was (if the claim is true) that must be cultural memes as the cause, as a genetic cause automatically was implausible to me.

> as a genetic cause automatically was implausible to me.

I agree. Given that Scandinavia was the homeland of the Vikings, I think arguing that they have a genetic predisposition away from crime would seem rather absurd.

Why is it absurd? The most violent ones left Scandinavia and died fighting or settled elsewhere.

Significant amounts of Vikings left Scandinavia to settle other places in Europe, so maybe the ones left behind were less predisposed to commit crimes /s

This is sort of a variant of the voluntary settlement hypothesis which I always found entertaining.

Why would a genetic cause be implausible? Genetics guide human behavior. It seems very unlikely that behavior doesn’t vary among ethnic groups, but many other phenotypic factors do.

Could not have some tenets of Scandinavian cultures survived in those regions? If so, would it be racist to study cultural differences and effects of relative monoculture?

Oh, yes, the ONLY two possibilities here.

Definitely not just the fact that there are many other factors at play.

He said "if it's true" and it's certainly an interesting question.