Data Mechanics

Years of schooling

Average years adults spent in school, and the years a child can expect today.

Mean years of schooling is the average number of years of education completed by people aged 25 and over. Expected years of schooling is how many years a child starting school can expect to spend in education if today's enrolment rates stay the same. The UNDP uses both in the Human Development Index and builds them from UNESCO Institute for Statistics data, Barro and Lee estimates and household surveys.

World map · Mean years of schooling

Source: UNDP, Human Development Report 2025 (updated HDR25) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

Over time · Mean years of schooling

Source: UNDP, Human Development Report 2025 (updated HDR25) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

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Every country, year and measure, with the source on each row.

Portrait of Klaus Jürgen Folz

About the author

Hello there, I’m Klaus Jürgen Folz. I studied Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, and I work in Austria as a lead Python and Power BI developer. I built Data Mechanics because good decisions start with facts. Public data is often scattered, hard to find or locked behind paywalls, and too much of what we read about the world is biased. Here, every number is shown as it was published, next to its source, so anyone can check it, compare countries and leaders, and draw their own conclusions.

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