Research and Publications

Ross Arena, Deepika Laddu, Nicolaas P. Pronk and Colin Woodard, “The geographic distribution of unhealthy living characteristics according to the American Nations model: Cultural factors warranting attention,” Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 2023, In Press.

Nationhood Lab director Colin Woodard joined a team of academic public health researchers to examine how the prevalence of physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, and access to exercise opportunities vary between the U.S. regional cultures identified in the American Nations model. The researchers found stark differences between the regional cultures in inactivity, diabetes and obesity rates, with the Deep South and Greater Appalachia performing very poorly and Yankeedom, Left Coast, Far West, and New Netherland performing well. The authors recommended further research as "there is something to be learned through viewing the unhealthy living and chronic disease pandemics through the American Nations model, specifically helping us understand how stakeholders should uniquely craft the [healthy lifestyle] message in the context of the regional cultural differences."

Ross Arena, Deepika Laddu, Nicolaas P. Pronk and Colin Woodard, "How has Physical Inactivity Changed in the American Nations From 2010 to 2020: A Decade of Lost Opportunity," Current Problems in Cardiology, Vol. 48, No. 11 (November 2023.)

Nationhood Lab director Colin Woodard and his co-authors used the American Nations model to show changes in self-reported physical inactivity among residents of the various U.S. regional cultures between 2010 and 2020. The researchers found only minor improvements in some regions, a slight worsening in El Norte, and no change at all in the Deep South. Lead author Arena – a physiologist and professor of physical therapy who specializes in the study of exercise – concluded this was “a lost decade in the battle against physical inactivity in the United States” that “should prompt significant concern amongst stakeholders from all relevant sectors . “The American Nations model indicates unique regional cultural differences and should be considered when crafting health promotion campaigns,” he added.

Joanne Haddad, "Settlers and Norms," ECARES Working Papers, ECARES 2022-02, European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2022.

Haddad, an economist and postdoctoral researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, sought to test Wilbur Zelinsky "first effective settler" hypothesis by testing if attitudes toward gender equity held by 17th to 19th century colonizer-settlers in U.S. counties were reflected in measures of gender equity in today's labor market. She found that women’s labor supply is higher, in both the short and long run, in U.S. counties that historically hosted a larger settler population originating from places with favorable gender attitudes. Her findings, she said, "shed new light on the importance of the characteristics of immigrants and their place of origin for cultural formation in hosting societies," and cited the American Nations model as the key contemporary exponent of Zelinsky's hypothesis.

Ross Arena, Nicolaas P. Pronk and Colin Woodard, "Physical Inactivity and Obesity in the United States: At the Intersection of Politics, Socioeconomics, Race, and Culture," Current Problems in Cardiology, Vol. 48, No. 12 (December 2023.)

Nationhood Lab director Colin Woodard and his co-authors used the American Nations model to probe the possible driving forces of the physical inactivity and obesity epidemics within specific U.S. regions The researchers found that, on a national level, counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 had lower prevalences of both conditions than those that voted for Donald Trump. But unique, region-specific cultural identities and partisan coalition demographics were apparent at the American Nations level and "serve as potential explanations for inconsistencies in PI and obesity prevalence across the U.S."

Colin Woodard, "America's Nations, America's Mythos of Union and the American Character," Perspectives on Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 4 (August 2020), pp. 269-278.

Woodard lays out the problems of U.S. nationhood, the philosophical divides between legacy regions, and the battle over the story of U.S. nationhood under which the U.S. federation might be governed. This paper -- the product of a 2019 conference held at the University of Colorado-Boulder under the wing of Michigan State University's William H. Allen -- lays out the underpinnings of what became the Nationhood Lab project and shows how the interlocking issues fit together.

Ross Arena, Nicolaas P. Pronk and Colin Woodard, "Physical Inactivity and Obesity in the United States Through the Lens of the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Elections," Current Problems in Cardiology, 2023. Pre-press.

Nationhood Lab director Colin Woodard and his co-authors extended their earlier research using the American Nations model to probe the possible driving forces of the physical inactivity and obesity epidemics within specific U.S. regions The researchers found that, on a national level, counties that voted for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and 2016 had higher prevalences of both conditions than those that voted for the Democratic nominee. But unique, region-specific cultural identities and partisan coalition demographics were again apparent at the American Nations level.

Lanning et al., “The Personality of American Nations: An Exploratory Study,” Personality Science, 2022, Vol. 3.

A team of academic researchers used the American Nations model to examine personality differences using data from over 75,000 respondents. Four nations were found to be particularly distinct: The Deep South, Left Coast, New Netherland and the Spanish Caribbean. Differences between nations at the level of the individual person were typically small, but were larger at the level of community, revealing how aggregation can contribute to differences in the lived experience of places in nations such as Yankeedom or Greater Appalachia.

Sarah J. Berkemer and Peter F. Stadler, “Street Name Data as a Reflection of Migration and Settlement History,” Urban Science, Vol. 4, No. 74 (December 2020)

Using the American Nations map, a pair of academic bioinformatic researchers at Germany’s University of Leipzig demonstrated that North American settlement and migration patterns can be detected via a statistical analysis of today’s street names. Using statistical analysis, the researchers found strong correlations between the language references in today’s street name patterns and the settlement patterns mapped in American Nations, especially for what the El Norte, New France, and Midlands regions, “despite renamings of streets, reconstructions and expansions of settlements, and a change in predominant language.”

Douglas L. Kriner and Colin Woodard, "Regional differences in perceptions of the threats to U.S. democracy," Nationhood Lab; 28 March 2023.

Kriner, faculty director of the Cornell University Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, and Woodard, director of Nationhood Lab, used the American Nations model to break down the results of a 2022 Cornell-IOPGA poll that examined Americans’ attitudes toward various alleged threats to the republic. They found strong differences between the regional cultures on the perception of various threats to U.S democracy even as they confirmed the original study's observation that two key swing districts they polled -- Texas-13 and Michigan-8 -- were unusually concerned about the threat of Trumpist threats. Their results were published here at the Nationhood Lab.

Aaron Danowski, "Governing to Save the Earth: An Analysis of How to Elect a Pro-Climate Congress in the United States of America,” Master's thesis, Department of Human Geography, Lund University; Spring 2019.

Danowski, a master's student at Lund University in Sweden, wrote his thesis on how to elect a pro-climate Congress in the United States using the American Nations model as the primary strategic template. In the process he categorized all Senate seats and every House district in the post-2010 census map by which American Nation dominated it, then analyzed every incumbent's climate policies and electoral strength to develop recommendations, including the need to take a regional strategy and to reform or eliminate the filibuster. Even then, however, Danowski concluded meaningful change to avert climate disaster would likely require a major partisan realignment prompted by catastrophes.

Caitlin Hagar, “Gender Wage Gap Trends Among Continental United States Nations,” Papers in resource Analysis, Vol. 21, Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota Central Services Press (2018.)

Hagar, who later became president of the national Women in GIS organization, wrote her prize-winning master’s thesis at St. Mary’s on gender gap wage differences in STEM fields between the regional cultures identified in American Nations. She found gender wage gaps favoring men were widest in Greater Appalachia, followed by the Far West and Deep South. In the Life Sciences sector, women were actually paid slightly better than men in Yankeedom. In Computer Science and Mathematics women in entry level jobs (i.e. with bachelor’s degrees) were underpaid even in the Left Coast – the global tech capital -- though the gap decreased for those with higher degrees. In Architecture and Engineering fields the entry-level gap was largest in Greater Appalachia and parts of Yankeedom and increased (rather than decreased) with education level.

David B. Audretsch, Martin Obschonka, Samuel D. Gosling and Jeff Potter, “A new perspective on entrepreneurial regions: linking cultural identity with latent and manifest entrepreneurship,” Small Business Economics, No. 48 (2017)

An international team of academic psychologists used the American Nations model to create the first, systematic overview of the relationship between regional cultural identity and entrepreneurship in the United States. They found the Far West, Left Coast, and Spanish Caribbean regions had the highest levels of entrepreneurship, the Deep South, Greater Appalachia, New France, El Norte and First Nation the least. "Our results indicate that policies aiming to stimulate a local entrepreneurship spirit in a given region need to be tempered with a recognition and awareness of the cultural identity underlying the region as well as the within-region dynamics between cultural identity and latent and manifest entrepreneurship," the authors concluded. "The efficacy and impact of entrepreneurship policies may be more conditioned by the cultural context and history of the region than has been previously considered."