Ruchir Agarwal is an economist at the IMF. His research interests are in the fields of macroeconomics, financial economics, and economics of innovation. Dr Patrick Gaule is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Bath. He specialises in the economics of science and innovation.
The production of knowledge is often perceived to be the archetype of a cognitively demanding activity that requires some form of innate or natural ability (talent). PhD physicists are reported to have an average IQ in the neighbourhood of 140. Yet, there has been little systematic study on the extent to which talented individuals become knowledge producers (or not), and how talent translates into knowledge production more generally.
In a new paper, we study how knowledge produced over a lifetime depends on talent displayed in teen years in the context of mathematics. We use a unique institutional feature of this discipline: the International Mathematics Olympiads (IMO), a prominent worldwide competition for high-school students. This setting allows us to measure talent in teenage years by their performance at the IMO. Since all participants in a given year answer the exact same questions, IMO performance is eminently comparable across multiple countries. We follow these participants over their lifetime and evaluate their lifetime knowledge production.
We find that even in this group of teenagers in the extreme right tail of the talent distribution, small differences in talent are associated with sizeable differences in long-term achievements, including getting a PhD in mathematics, number of mathematics publications and cites, and being awarded a Fields medal. For instance, each additional point scored on the IMO by a participant in their teenage year (out of a total possible score of 42) is associated with a 2.6 per cent increase in mathematics publications and a 4.5 per cent increase in mathematics citations over their lifetime.
Yet, this relationship does not hold equally across countries. Compared to their counterparts from high-income countries who obtained the same score in the IMOs, participants born in low- or middle-income countries produce considerably less knowledge over their lifetime. A participant from a low-income country produces 35 per cent fewer mathematics publications and receives over 50 per cent fewer mathematics citations than an equally talented participant from a high-income country. The cross-country income group differences in mathematics knowledge produced reflect in large part the fact that participants from low- and middle-income are considerably less likely to do a PhD in mathematics.
Does it matter that talented youngsters from developing countries are lost to mathematics? We estimate that knowledge production could be 10 per cent higher in terms of publications and 17 per cent higher in terms of citations if developing country participants were not lost to the world of science. But the loss could be larger still considering extreme outcomes. The chance that an IMO gold medallist will become a Fields medallist (the most prestigious award in mathematics) is fifty times larger than the corresponding probability for a PhD graduate from a top 10 mathematics programme.
Why are developing country participants less likely to become professional mathematicians and produce less mathematical knowledge? Research and training capacity in the home country seems to play a role. However, other factors may also be at play. For instance, developing country participants may have different preferences or private incentives to enter different types of careers, in particular if careers outside mathematics pay more. Future research may further elucidate the role of different factors in cross-country differences in the utilisation of talent.
Various policy interventions could be used to ensure that extremely talented individuals from developing countries are not lost to the world of science. First, fellowships and financial support for top tier talent could enable such individuals to study at top tier European or American institutions, where they would access to the very best mathematics education. For instance, MIT is a pioneer in this type of activity: it does an international outreach and provides needs-based financial support to a number of international undergraduate students. More institutions could run similar programmes. Second, strengthening mathematics research and training capacity in developing countries could not only improve the training of those who prefer to stay in their home country, but would also make mathematics research careers more attractive to them.
While our research has focused on mathematics, talent may also be important in other fields such as biomedicine and computer science. Policies to encourage exceptionally talented youth to pursue scientific careers — especially those from lower income countries — may facilitate the advancement of the knowledge frontier both in mathematics and beyond.
This blog was originally published via LSE Business Review on 22 January 2019.
Responses
My IQ was tested at age 9. It was 160. I am 77 now and no longer particularly smart, but that isn’t why I am wrong this response. I went to very poor schools until about 7 or 8 months before I took that IQ test. Then I went to a very good school for about 3 or 4 months. Then I didn’t go to school for about 3 months. I came from a school system where you could start in February, so when I started the new school system, which was on the whole year system they automatically held me back. I didn’t want to spend time being bored to death in school so I pushed myself really hard and aced everything pretending that it was because I had already had all of that stuff, while the truth was that it was all very new to me from the good school which I had attended for a few months. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t have been able to pull that off. After 2 weeks of pretending that the work was old stuff for me, they pulled me out and gave me an IQ test and advanced me to the next grade, where the teacher always berated me saying that with my IQ I should be doing much better, not that I was doing badly, I just wasn’t making straight As. Well my point is that how much is lost in our own country, when poor kids are often stuck on overcrowded schools in classes where many kids are slow and the teaching is aimed at the lowest level. Little kids brains are like sponges and even more so if they are high I Q little children. Prime learning years almost wasted. I wasn’t really culturally or intellectually deprived at home, like a lot of poor children , although home wasn’t an intellectually rich environment like the homes off better off children. When I was a little kid I loved to learn. I was thrilled with the homework that I got at that goog school that I was at for a few months. That’s cool that put me ahead was a pretty good school, too. It would have been better if my teacher wasn’t so mean about my not making straight As. We moved to another city and I went to an intellectually average school for 2 years, not particularly challenging, but not boring at least. Then after that very good schools and I was always in the most advanced classes. School was interesting, but by this time I was more interested in boys than studying. If the subject was particularly interesting I might put a lot of energy into it, but otherwise, I was just too used to getting by with no effort. My point is identify the really smart kids when they are very young and give them appropriate schooling. A lot was lost with me due to my early school years being a complete waste. My younger brother, who spent
2 1/2 years less in the school that taught nothing than I did and also had an intellectual advantage, because I taught him to read at 4. No one taught me so I didn’t learn until 1st grade. His IQ weirdly enough was measured at 159 and yet he was always miles smarter than me. He was always amazing people with his intelligence and yet we had essentially the same IQ. He did have one natural advantage that didn’t come from from schooling though, he had an amazing memory. I never did. My memory for details was always pretty average, although until very recently, once learned, I would never forget a concept and I learned new things lightning fast for the most part at least for the first 5 decades of my life. He did seem generally smarter than me, though and it was not just his amazing memory. I would probably never had his talents, I just wasn’t born that way, but the lack of education school being an exercise in boredom until I was 8 1/2 didn’t help my brain development. If really smart kids can be identified early and educated appropriately, I believe their potential would stand a much better chance of being realized. From what I have seen in my life is many really smart poor kids living I slum neighborhoods where the schools are poor grow up to be gang leaders, because they are so much smarter than their piers and the bad guys have all of the money and the glamour. All children deserve a decent environment and decent schools, but what is society loosing by wasting these children in poor schools. Instead of someone who may discover a cure for cancer, you may get a master criminal. There is potentially a nearly untapped pool of brain power right I. Our own country. Let’s find it and make the most of it.