Economist Ian Palmer looks at which countries actually did best at the Olympics – adjusting for size and wealth
While the performance of the United States and others at the top of the Olympics medals table looks impressive, the US clearly has two major advantages: it is a big and rich country. If adjustments are made for these two factors, the medals standings look completely different and, in fact, the Bahamas wins: it is a country with only 278 000 people and it is not that wealthy in relation to many Western countries. Yet its athletes have won a gold and a silver medal, the gold in a relay event to boot. In the table above the medal standings are analysed as follows. The number of “gold equivalent” medals are calculated rating a silver as two-thirds and bronze as one-third of a gold (of course, these ratios can be changed). The number of “gold equivalent” medals per million population in the country is calculated. The “gold equivalents per million” figure is then adjusted based on the per capita gross national product (GNP) for the country, a measure of the country’s wealth.
Adjusting the “gold equivalent per million” based directly on the GNP per capita ratio gives the figures in the seventh column. This gives a rather extreme adjustment for wealth.
In order to make the adjustment for wealth less extreme, the GNP per capita ratio can be “tuned” by raising it to the power of 0,7. For example, Australia is four times wealthier per capita than the world average and the “tuning” reduces this factor to 2,64.
Looking at the adjusted medal rankings, the real champion nations are the Caribbean countries – the West Indies and Cuba. The East Europeans also excelled – almost every one of these not-so-wealthy nations did very well. Ethiopia and Kenya were Africa’s brightest lights; while hosts Australia were the best of the West. South Africa does not fare that well. However, we are in good company: neither does the United States, which is next to us in 61st position. Ian Palmer is an engineer/economist and MD of infrastructure management and finance consulting firm Palmer Development Group
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