Mapping disparities in education across low- and middle-income countries

Creative Commons License

Graetz N., Woyczynski L., Wilson K. F., Hall J. B., Abate K. H., Abd-Allah F., ...More

NATURE, vol.577, no.7789, pp.235-238, 2020 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus) identifier identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 577 Issue: 7789
  • Publication Date: 2020
  • Doi Number: 10.1038/s41586-019-1872-1
  • Journal Name: NATURE
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Aerospace Database, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, Animal Behavior Abstracts, Applied Science & Technology Source, Aqualine, Aquatic Science & Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA), Art Source, Artic & Antarctic Regions, BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, Communication Abstracts, EBSCO Education Source, EMBASE, Environment Index, Food Science & Technology Abstracts, Gender Studies Database, Geobase, INSPEC, MEDLINE, Metadex, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Pollution Abstracts, Psycinfo, Public Affairs Index, Veterinary Science Database, zbMATH, DIALNET, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.235-238
  • Kocaeli University Affiliated: No

Abstract

Analyses of the proportions of individuals who have completed key levels of schooling across all low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2017 reveal inequalities across countries as well as within populations. Educational attainment is an important social determinant of maternal, newborn, and child health(1-3). As a tool for promoting gender equity, it has gained increasing traction in popular media, international aid strategies, and global agenda-setting(4-6). The global health agenda is increasingly focused on evidence of precision public health, which illustrates the subnational distribution of disease and illness(7,8); however, an agenda focused on future equity must integrate comparable evidence on the distribution of social determinants of health(9-11). Here we expand on the available precision SDG evidence by estimating the subnational distribution of educational attainment, including the proportions of individuals who have completed key levels of schooling, across all low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2017. Previous analyses have focused on geographical disparities in average attainment across Africa or for specific countries, but-to our knowledge-no analysis has examined the subnational proportions of individuals who completed specific levels of education across all low- and middle-income countries(12-14). By geolocating subnational data for more than 184 million person-years across 528 data sources, we precisely identify inequalities across geography as well as within populations.