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Mean Years of Schooling and Educational Attainment

Mean Years of Schooling and Educational Attainment
Charles Gale, Research Associate, Education Policy and Data Center

In its most recent data release, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) included country-level data on Mean Years of Schooling (MYS) for the first time. This is an indicator, developed based on a methodology proposed by Barro and Lee, which has been used as one of two education indicators in UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI). It uses educational attainment data collected in an annual survey from national ministries, and is designed as an internationally comparable measure of a particular country’s “stock” of human capital.

The methodology for calculating MYS can be described roughly as follows. The attainment of the population aged 25 and older is broken down according to ISCED level of education; those with no education, those with incomplete and completed primary education, those with incomplete and completed lower secondary education, and so on. These percentages are then multiplied by the official duration of schooling levels of the country, and for those with an incomplete level of schooling, that schooling level duration is divided by 2 in order to give a rough approximation to include in the measure. These separate calculations are then aggregated, to give a population weighted measure[1].

Figure 1 compares MYS to the average years of schooling (AYS) indicator which EPDC calculates, based on household survey data. As can be seen some countries stand out as being comparable on these conceptually similar measures, while others do not. One interesting thing about MYS is that it attempts to account for changing school level durations within countries, by matching the attainment reported for a specified adult age group with the official duration of schooling when that age group was of the corresponding school-level age[2]. As documented in another EPDC post about measuring educational attainment in Viet Nam, many countries may have had shifting “official” school level durations over time and across regions, making it difficult to determine exactly the number of years of schooling that should be considered “completed primary”, for example. Of course, the UIS uses the ISCED school level classification, which has less variation over time but may be distinct from a country’s own defined schooling level durations (these differences are documented in EPDC’s country profile pages). While there are some noted limitations with the MYS indicator, including large data gaps for sub-Saharan African countries, it represents an important step forward in improving the measurement of educational attainment for youth and adult populations. The grades conversion table used in the 2011 MICS represents another attempt to improve the measurement of educational attainment levels within countries.

[2] See p. 5 of UIS methodology paper for the formula and detailed examples

 

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