Countries with bad institutions (including the bad cultural values you list) generally end up in the middle-income range; there are many examples in Latin America. And there’s still hope for these to grow further once civil-society institutions get strong enough. Obviously you can find examples where abject poverty is entirely the fault of bad institutions (North Korea), but that’s not the case for the countries that are targeted by top GiveWell charities.
So I looked up the poorest countries in the world. Depending on how you measure it, Malawi, the DR of congo and the Central African Republic are at the bottom.
Wikipedia on the Democratic Republic of Congo:
DR Congo is extremely rich in natural resources but political instability, a lack of infrastructure and a culture of corruption have limited development, extraction and exploitation efforts
The Central African Republic
The Central African Republic Bush War began in 2004 and, despite a peace treaty in 2007 and another in 2011, fighting broke out between government, Muslim, and Christian factions in December 2012, leading to ethnic and religious cleansing
Malawi:
Corruption within the government is seen as a major issue, despite the Malawi Anti-Corruption Bureau’s (ACB) attempts to reduce it. The ACB appears to be successful at finding and prosecuting low level corruption, but higher level officials appear to be able to act with impunity
Countries with bad institutions (including the bad cultural values you list) generally end up in the middle-income range; there are many examples in Latin America. And there’s still hope for these to grow further once civil-society institutions get strong enough. Obviously you can find examples where abject poverty is entirely the fault of bad institutions (North Korea), but that’s not the case for the countries that are targeted by top GiveWell charities.
So I looked up the poorest countries in the world. Depending on how you measure it, Malawi, the DR of congo and the Central African Republic are at the bottom.
Wikipedia on the Democratic Republic of Congo:
The Central African Republic
Malawi: