Economic Wealth and Education: A Global Comparison
Abstract
Poverty has long been associated with lower levels of school achievement within developed nations, as well as across nations. The level of economic wealth of a nation has also been found to be correlated with many aspects relating to education: funding, access, human resources, literacy, etc. This paper uses World Bank data to describe educational achievement and gender equity in education in countries at each of four levels of economic wealth as described by the World Bank. Results show that GNI is a good indicator of educational achievement across levels of economic wealth, that wealthier countries in general have higher educational achievement, with a few understandable exceptions, and that girls’ education is an issue mainly in Level 1 countries.
