Research Highlights Featured Chart
December 16, 2020
Hidden genius
Particpants of Dhaka regional math Olympiad cheer in January 2018.
Nurunnaby Chowdhury/Wikimedia Commons
Identifying and nurturing innovators who produce groundbreaking research is essential to economic growth.
Unfortunately, a lot of young talent from poorer countries don’t realize their potential.
In the 蝌蚪网 Review: Insights, authors and examine whether individuals who excelled at math as teenagers had more productive research careers. Indeed, they found that teens who scored well in the , a global math competition, were more likely to get a PhD, publish and collect citations for their research, and win the prestigious .
But their career success was also tied to where they were born.
from Agarwal and Gaule (2020)
The above plots the share of Olympiad participants who obtained a PhD in math by points scored at the competition and across different groups of countries. Generally, high-income countries (the black line) had a greater share of PhDs throughout the score distribution. That was followed by upper-middle-income countries (green), lower-middle-income countries (grey), and then low-income countries (blue) had the lowest share.
Their research highlights that policies to encourage talented youth to pursue scientific careers—especially those from poorer countries—could advance the knowledge frontier faster.