Do Middle Eastern ancestry and PISA reading go together across countries?

Across 80 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.34, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.12.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Middle Eastern ancestry cause PISA reading?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Middle Eastern ancestry vs. PISA reading

Holds up after adjusting for income

A country is not a person, and ancestry is not destiny. Countries where more people have ancestors from one part of the world also tend to differ on the other measure, and that is all. It does notfollow that people with that ancestry are the people with the different score. Making that leap is called the ecological fallacy: reading a pattern across places as a fact about individual people. Ancestry also goes very closely with region and with history, including colonisation and the Atlantic slave trade, and with national income. So much of what looks like ancestry here is really those. That is what the adjusted figures and the region-by-region view are for. The shares are one estimate, for around the year 2000, of where people’s ancestors lived in 1500, not how anyone identifies.

Across 80 countries, Middle Eastern ancestry and PISA reading rise and fall together at r = -0.34 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.36, q = 0.0064, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed.

Comparing countries across the middle half of middle eastern ancestry, 0% to 0.625% of population, pisa reading is worse by 0.387 PISA points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.262 PISA points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.338p = 0.002 · 80 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.360p = 0.001 · likely range [-0.54, -0.15]

p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.026 · 5 regions

Check for luck (q)0.006across 13,797 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Middle Eastern ancestry · % of populationlink with income +0.16 · independent

PISA reading · PISA pointslink with income +0.77 · high

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.338	0.002	80
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.121	0.284	80
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.360	0.001	80
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.326	0.003	80

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 80 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: -0.022 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.382 (without CYP) to -0.291 (without SAU). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: SAU (+0.069).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.

correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed
much weaker within regions than across them (largely a between-region difference)

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	13	+0.04
Europe & Central Asia	40	-0.01
Latin America & Caribbean	15	+0.13

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	27	-0.30
Middle third	26	-0.05
Richest third	27	-0.67

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	52	-0.15
Muslims	15	-0.29

By last european coloniser

	n	r
Spain	14	-0.17
United Kingdom	13	-0.47

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.089 after dropping 15 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	% of population	PISA points	Years
Tunisia TUN	100%	361	2000, 2015
Algeria DZA	100%	350	2000, 2015
United Arab Emirates ARE	100%	417	2000, 2022
Jordan JOR	98%	342	2000, 2022
Malta MLT	95.8%	445	2000, 2022
Saudi Arabia SAU	95.4%	383	2000, 2022
Lebanon LBN	93.1%	353	2000, 2018
Morocco MAR	91%	339	2000, 2022
Israel ISR	62.7%	474	2000, 2022
Qatar QAT	61.8%	419	2000, 2022
France FRA	4.8%	474	2000, 2022
Argentina ARG	3%	401	2000, 2022
Australia AUS	2.5%	498	2000, 2022
Chile CHL	2%	448	2000, 2022
Belgium BEL	1.6%	479	2000, 2022

Putterman, L. and Weil, D. N. (2010), 'Post-1500 Population Flows and the Long-Run Determinants of Economic Growth and Inequality', Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(4); World Migration Matrix version 1.1 (2009).
OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics

Sources

Middle Eastern ancestry

Middle Eastern and North African ancestry (share of the population)

Louis Putterman and David N. Weil, Brown University · No licence stated; used with citation · updated one edition (version 1.1, 2009)

The estimated share of today's population whose ancestors in the year 1500 lived in the Middle East or North Africa. This is the closest thing to race shares that can be compared across countries: national censuses each use their own race and ethnic categories, and most countries record none. It is about where people's ancestors lived, not how anyone identifies, and it is one estimate for around the year 2000, built from history, migration records and genetic studies. Every country's six ancestry shares add up to 100%, so they are linked to each other by arithmetic. No "better" direction is set.

PISA reading

PISA mean reading score

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2000–2022. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 5 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 13,797 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Middle Eastern ancestry and PISA reading

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Middle Eastern ancestry changes PISA reading, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.