Why do some countries always gain and other always lose rating points?

World Youth Chess Championships are known to produce tons of interesting games and often very surprising and inconsistent results. However, it appears that at least one thing stays fairly consistent – certain federations typically gain rating points while others lose them at the event. Why is there such a contrasting trend for Asian versus European countries, and what could be the possible reasons behind it? Sveta Demchenko presents the data from which we can draw our conclusions.