Educational Attainment Dataset

Data source: Barro and Lee

Description:

The Barro-Lee Data set provides data dis-aggregated by sex and by 5-year age intervals. It provides educational attainment data for 146 countries in 5-year intervals from 1950 to 2010. It also provides information about the distribution of educational attainment of the adult population over age 15 and over age 25 by sex at seven levels of schooling - no formal education, incomplete primary, complete primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, incomplete tertiary, and complete tertiary. Average years of schooling at all levels - primary, secondary, and tertiary - are also measured for each country and for regions in the world.

This is the latest updated version of the Barro-Lee dataset reported in Barro and Lee (2013). Dr. Hanol Lee, an associate professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, has collaborated on the project.

The main aim of this new version is to construct estimates of educational attainment for the population between 15 and 64 years old for the year of 2015. The estimates are disaggregated by gender and by 10-year age group, whereas those in the original dataset were disaggregated by 5-year age group. This is due to the limited availability of disaggregated statistics in the newly complied census/survey data.

Last updated by source: 2021-09-01

Citation:

    @article{bl1,
 author = {Robert J. Barro and Jong Wha Lee},
 journal = {Journal of Development Economics},
 pages = {184--198},
 publisher = {Elsevier},
 title = {A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950--2010},
 volume = {104},
 year = {2013}
}

@article{bl2,
 author = {Lee, Jong-Wha and Hanol Lee},
 journal = {Journal of Development Economics},
 pages = {147--169},
 publisher = {Elsevier},
 title = {Human Capital in the Long Run},
 volume = {122},
 year = {2016}
}


    

Variables in this dataset: