Where in the world are all the Hams?

Following an article in eHam.net which raised questions about the worldwide distributions of hams and engendered speculation about the possible reasons for differences in Ham populations across countries, Bob Olsen, KK7WN attempted to shed light on these issues.

He collected some demographic data from various sources including the United Nations, the IARU, and various other professional research organizations. He was able to find relatively complete and comparable information for 36 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Oceania and Asia. Although these countries make up a small portion of all countries, they do contain the “lion’s share” of the world’s Hams.

He focused on Hams as a percentage of a country’s population since it is obvious that more populous countries would be expected to have a larger absolute number of Hams. The average (median) has about one Ham for every 1300 residents. Examples of countries near this average include Sweden, Austria, Australia and the Netherlands.

The high-end “outliers” include Japan (1 per 99) and South Korea (1 per 333). Low-end “outliers” include Russia (1 per 33,000) and China (1 per 17,000, including Taiwan). Averages for countries by region are: North America (1 per 546), South America (1 per 2,800), Oceania (1 per 926), Scandinavia (1 per 819), Northern Europe (1 per 1,500), Southern Europe (1 per 2,100).

Ham percentages appear to be most influenced by a culture’s attitude toward “personal electronic gadgetry”. For example, holding all else constant, countries that have the greatest relative number of personal PCs and the greatest relative Internet use have the largest number of Hams per inhabitant. Ham percentages also appear to be strongly influenced by language. In particular, country Ham percentages are higher where a significant proportion of a country’s population speaks a language that is widespread worldwide. Again this influence is most noticeable in North America, Oceania and Scandinavia (where English is for many the academically required second language).

The very poor penetration of Ham radio in France (1 per 3,200) appears to be a function of a lesser acceptance of electronic gadgetry as well as generally acknowledged
lesser use of languages other than French.

Gross per capita income does not influence Ham penetration unless it is very low or accompanied by a strong general interest in electronic gadgetry. In fact, where gadgetry interest is low, higher incomes are associated with reduced relative interest in Ham radio.

Ham radio penetration is slightly greater where the population density is less. There is no evidence that this effect is related to the difficulty of antenna placement. It appears to be more related to an overall felt need to “stay connected”.

Source: Radio Bulgaria

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