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CountryAtlas
Education · Attainment

Mean years of schooling (ages 25+)

years · Annual · 145 of 218 countries (67 %) · 1870–2020
Ranking Download CSV
World average (population-weighted)
9.0 yrs
across 145 countries, 2020
Latest observation
2020
Source updated
17 Jul 2023
CountryAtlas refreshed
11 Sep 2026
Snapshot 20260911T072322Z

World map

One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.

No data available

Trend

Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.

Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.

Highest and lowest

The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2020.

Full ranking →

Top 5

Bottom 5

Compare countries

Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.

No series for the selected countries.

Definition

Definition
Unit
years (yrs)
Frequency
Annual
Aggregation
none · Higher is better
Valid range
0 – 20

Sources & provenance

Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.

  1. Priority #1
    Our World in Datagraphermean-years-of-schooling-long-runok
    145 countries · 3,480 obs. · → 2020 · CC BY 4.0

    Average years of schooling — Barro and Lee (2015); Lee and Lee (2016)

    Open at source

Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.

Countries without data

Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.

Downloads & API

Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.

Download CSV Download JSON

API example

One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.

bash
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=mean-years-of-schooling" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'

API documentation →