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.
Due to this, the planet falls into the star's temperate zone, where the temperature is suitable enough to allow liquid water to exist, which further hints at it being suitable to possibly support water-based life.
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.
After he discovered the South Sandwich Islands in 1774, he came to the conclusion that if there was a Terra Australis incognita, it would be beyond the ice barrier and not in the temperate zone.
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.