  Croatia does not score well in the human development index, rate of
employment, or development of the high tech sector - to mention only a few
indicators that hinder good prospects for improvement. Also, Croatian high
school students are at the bottom of European rankings on performance in
science and mathematics and their interest in career in science is declining.
Croatia needs more educated people, especially in the area of science and
technology, and this can be achieved only if the youth become interested in
science at an early age. Thus, science fair competitions are of an utmost
importance for development of Croatia. This paper aims at investigating a
relation of the Croatian counties' development index and their students'
participation rates in the science fair competitions. This is done by including
two development indexes in search for the relation with the counties'
participation rates in biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics competition,
and with a reference to a previous research on astronomy competition. As is
revealed, there is a growing trend of interconnection of the development index
and participation rates at science competitions in all disciplines.
