The unavoidable necessity of storing food to live on during the winter means that, for centuries, ingrained habits of saving were also essential for survival among peoples in the temperate zones.
If you go out farther, it goes dramatically down as these states which benefited from being a temperate zone become arid states and farming goes farther - farther north or to Canada.
The best light fingerprint we have for life on the Earth is the combination of oxygen and methane for carbon-based life, with a water solvent, on a planet in the temperate zone around its star.
Human capital may also play a role in the fact that has often been pointed out, that many of the poorest societies have been located in the tropics, and many of the most prosperous have been located in temperate zones.