Fig 9. Witchcraft beliefs and exposure to misfortunes.

Each panel of the figure presents the results of estimating 7 different models, in which the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs at the country level is regressed on the metric of exposure to misfortune indicated in the panel title, along with a set of control variables. The latter is defined as follows according to the tickmarks on the vertical axis: 1) none for “No controls”, 2) only continental fixed effects for “Continent FE”, 3) continental fixed effects and baseline geographic controls (absolute latitude, terrain ruggedness, agricultural suitability of land, distance to the coastline) for “Geography.” The remaining 4 models, named “Income,” “Religiosity,” “Kinship,” and “Institutions” include, respectively, real GDP per capita, average religiosity, kinship intensity index, and the rule-of-law index (in addition to continental fixed effects and geographic variables). The round marker represents the point estimate for the coefficient on the respective metric of exposure to misfortune, and the linear segment around each marker is the corresponding 95% confidence interval based on heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors. Confidence intervals that do not cross the reference vertical line at 0 correspond to statistical significance of the relevant point estimate at the 5% level. Sample size N indicated in parentheses. The key variables are standardized to have zero mean and unit standard deviation in relevant samples.