You shouldn't reason from Nobel Prize per capita all the way back to gifted & talented education without bringing in many other factors to your regression.

The US is the wealthiest economy in the world with the best elite higher education establishment with some of the largest investments in STEM or R&D in general, with the largest Jewish population outside Israel (which, IIRC, beats the US on per capita measures), and as wedrifid pointed out, for all these factors attracts the best students from across the world. Just off the top of my head.

This means that our G&T programs could easily be underperforming and a simple gross observation of per capita Nobelists not make this instantly obvious. A better approach would be to simply look for experiments, natural or otherwise, on funding for G&T programs and seeing how they do.