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Mostly cultural reasons. Hard work and ingenuity and genetic differences over undress of thousands of people each generation times many generations tend to add up. Of course war and natural disasters tend to be a significant setback, especially in the past. Take USA as an example, no significant internal struggle and external threat in hundred plus years combined with fertile ground for innovation and progress and them siphoning up smart people from all around the world made them into one of the richest countries ever. Meanwhile middle east had constant wars for hundreds of years and they are mostly shitholes and subsaharran Africa had zero innovations until the colonisation and after liberation they regressed back.
Of course you have countries like Qatar which lucked out and have insane natural resources. As a counterexample you have Norway which also has oil but has a much higher quality of life.
