The Distribution of Olympic Talent

With the 2016 summer Olympics in full swing I was disappointed with the lack of athletes from my own country, Pakistan, that I could support. With only seven athletes representing the sixth most populous nation in the world I became curious about the disproportionate, either under or over, representation of other countries in Rio. Do Chinese and Indian athletes make up over 35% of all Olympians this year? Similarly, is the Jamaican athletic delegation reflective of it's around 0.4 percent population share? If not then why? This post addresses these questions.

Using data from the CIA World Factbook and the IOC I obtain measures of global population shares and athlete shares in Rio for each country ¹. Using these shares I consider the log difference ² between the athlete and population shares. So, for example, with around 3 million inhabitants, Mongolia accounts for about 0.04 percent of the global population. On the other hand, the 43 Mongolian athletes account for 0.38 percent of all Olympians this year. So Mongolians are over-represented at this year's Olympics with a large and positive log difference between these two shares. In contrast, Nigerians are under-represented with 2.5 and 0.7 percent population and athlete share respectively.

The above map illustrates the disproportionate representation of each country's Olympic delegation. Countries in green are over-represented and countries in purple are under-represented. Darker shades represent more uneven distributions of athletes and population. The map clearly shows that much of Asia and Africa is under-represented, while much of Europe, Oceania and the Americas are over-represented.

Eyeballing this map suggests that poorer nations tend to be under-represented relative to wealthier nations.This should not surprise most readers since, while it may be true that innate talent is independently and identically distributed (i.i.d) across borders, the resources needed to develop this talent into Olympic athletes is certainly not. The obvious, and most easily measured, of these resources is monetary input. After all, it is expensive to build athletic facilities, pay coaches and travel to international competitions. However, this is far from the only input required to create athletes. Nations need to encourage innate talent and create an environment where sports and athleticism is rewarded either socially or financially. I think of this residual resource as the cultural input necessary for the development of Olympic talent. 

Although culture is hard to quantify, it is possible to obtain a theoretical estimate by controlling for a measure of monetary input. Indeed, by controlling for GDP per capita on our measure of over/under representation we can interpret the residual/unexplained component of representation as being attributed to cultural differences in the perception of athletics. Those countries with the highest(lowest) residual component can then be interpreted to have high(low) levels of cultural input.

The figure below plots the log-differences in athletic and population shares against log GDP per capita for each competing nation. I also include a fitted line obtained from regressing the log differences on log GDP per capita. It is clear that the relationship between these two measures is positive. This simply reinforces the fact that spending on athletics is a normal good. 

In addition, the figure identifies those countries with highest and lowest 5th percentile residuals from this regression. These are those nations that are furthest, either above or below, from the trend line. Consider the example of China; Chinese athletes are under-represented at this year's Olympics. After controlling for GDP per capita they are still under-represented relative to economies with similar levels of GDP per capita. This unexplained deviation from the trend can be thought of as a low cultural input in China ³. Conversely, athletes from the Central African Republic are over-represented even after controlling for GDP per capita; a high cultural input. These countries can be thought of as outliers.

The table details the the 5 countries with the lowest and highest cultural input into developing Olympic athletes. The bottom four countries share the common trait that they are all majority Muslim. While much progress is being made in this front, traditionally female athletics in Muslim countries is not always actively pursued closing the door to a large pool of potential Olympians which could explain their low ranking.  Furthermore India, the fifth lowest country, is culturally very similar to both Pakistan and Bangladesh suggesting that these three former British colonies share a common attitude towards Olympic sports. 

On the other end, there is no such common trait among the top five countries. Instead each appears to be a specialist in a given set of Olympic sports with a long tradition of producing Olympians. Jamaica dominates track events. New Zealand is included in this list since they compete in team sports (i.e. rugby and soccer) which increases their athlete share. A quick googling suggests that Armenia and Estonia are specialists in weightlifting, wrestling and athletics.

I began looking into this data to understand if Pakistan was exceptional in it's under-representation at this year's Olympics. While Pakistan does rank as having the lowest level of cultural resources it has the company of a few other Muslim nations. We should not aim to be the next Jamaica or Armenia but we should aim to move closer to the trend line and not by lowering our GDP per capita.

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^{1. I only include those countries that have an Olympic delegation. I exclude those countries that have fewer than 1 million inhabitants. The Independent and Refugee Olympic Athletes are also excluded in this analysis. ↩}

^{2. I use this as an approximation for percentage differences between athlete and population shares.↩}

^{3. While there are alternative measures of the monetary resources available to develop athletic talent, I think GDP per capita suffices for this blog post. ↩}