Middle Eastern ancestry vs. Regulatory quality
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 158 countries, Middle Eastern ancestry and Regulatory quality rise and fall together at r = -0.05 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). There is almost no link to explain.
Comparing countries across the middle half of middle eastern ancestry, 0% to 0.275% of population, regulatory quality is worse by 0.00048 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.00138 points.
Link before adjusting (r)-0.055p = 0.496 · 158 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.255p = 0.001 · likely range [-0.40, -0.10]
p, allowing for regions0.001standard error 0.043 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.019across 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
Regulatory quality · index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)link with income +0.83 · proxy
“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 | -0.055 | 0.496 | 158 |
| By rank (Spearman), not adjusted | +0.045 | 0.573 | 158 |
| Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income | -0.255 | 0.001 | 158 |
| By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income | -0.153 | 0.056 | 158 |
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 158 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: -0.201 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.282 (without JOR) to -0.212 (without LBY). 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: LBY (+0.043).
Fragile: this link may not hold up.
- correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed
- direction is not consistent across regions
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 | 19 | +0.24 | |
| Europe & Central Asia | 45 | +0.04 | |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 23 | +0.05 | |
| Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan | 20 | -0.37 | |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 44 | -0.14 |
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 | 53 | -0.20 | |
| Middle third | 52 | -0.35 | |
| Richest third | 53 | -0.20 |
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 | 92 | -0.06 | |
| Muslims | 45 | -0.21 |
By last european coloniser
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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| France | 24 | -0.44 | |
| Never a European colony | 21 | -0.23 | |
| Spain | 19 | +0.31 | |
| United Kingdom | 46 | -0.29 |
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 = -0.014 after dropping 35 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 | index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5) | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tunisia TUN | 100% | -0.39 | 2000, 2024 |
| Kuwait KWT | 100% | 0.404 | 2000, 2024 |
| Algeria DZA | 100% | -0.753 | 2000, 2024 |
| Bahrain BHR | 100% | 0.95 | 2000, 2024 |
| United Arab Emirates ARE | 100% | 1.13 | 2000, 2024 |
| Jordan JOR | 98% | 0.276 | 2000, 2024 |
| Iran, Islamic Rep. IRN | 98% | -1.51 | 2000, 2024 |
| Libya LBY | 96.5% | -1.74 | 2000, 2024 |
| Malta MLT | 95.8% | 0.492 | 2000, 2024 |
| Saudi Arabia SAU | 95.4% | 0.71 | 2000, 2024 |
| Syrian Arab Republic SYR | 94.8% | -2 | 2000, 2024 |
| Egypt, Arab Rep. EGY | 94.5% | -0.499 | 2000, 2024 |
| Iraq IRQ | 94.4% | -1.03 | 2000, 2024 |
| Lebanon LBN | 93.1% | -0.959 | 2000, 2024 |
| Morocco MAR | 91% | -0.0267 | 2000, 2024 |
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).
Kaufmann, D. and A. Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Bank
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.
How this was computed
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2000–2024. 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 7 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 Regulatory quality
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Middle Eastern ancestry changes Regulatory quality, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Middle Eastern ancestry or Regulatory quality
- Corruption Perceptions Index vs Regulatory quality before +0.91 → after adjusting +0.81
- Political corruption vs Regulatory quality before -0.80 → after adjusting -0.62
- Middle Eastern ancestry vs Muslim share before +0.50 → after adjusting +0.56
- Middle Eastern ancestry vs Religion very important before +0.49 → after adjusting +0.55
- Regulatory quality vs Researchers before +0.77 → after adjusting +0.52
- Alcohol consumption vs Middle Eastern ancestry before -0.37 → after adjusting -0.51
- Regulatory quality vs Women's political empowerment before +0.62 → after adjusting +0.49
- Female labor participation vs Middle Eastern ancestry before -0.48 → after adjusting -0.49