Why education comes first
Countries develop when their children go to school — not when they get richer. A generation after a country puts its children through school, its families are smaller and its people live longer, whether or not it got rich along the way.
Our target is the full twelve years, through the end of secondary school. The charts on this page follow the first nine of them, the stage measured the same way across countries and decades. "Developed" means a country's birth rate and life expectancy have reached where the United States stood in 1960 — the same line as the chart on our homepage. Here is the evidence, in four pieces.
One country, one constitution, different schooling
Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in India's south; Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in its north. One constitution, one supreme court, one currency. What differed was how many women had been to school — and family size followed it, decades apart.
- Women who could read, 2011
- South 73% · North 55%
- When the average family fell to two children
- South around 2003 · North around 2025 — 22 years apart
- Every southern state got there first
- The last southern state (2010) beat the first northern state (2020) by ten years
- Today
- Bihar and Uttar Pradesh still haven't reached where the south stood twenty years ago
Countries that started together
Take two countries that stood in the same place in 1950. Follow the one that built schools faster. It develops first — by decades.
The Philippines was richer. Korea built schools.
In 1950, one young Korean in four and one young Filipino in five had finished nine years of school — close. The Philippines had the higher income. Korea then put its children through school faster than any country on record, and by 1987 it was developed. The Philippines got there in 2017, thirty years later.
Share of 20-to-24-year-olds who had finished nine years of school. Income per person in 1960: Philippines $1,124, Korea $1,038.
India and China both started at one in ten.
In 1950, one young adult in ten had finished nine years of school in both countries. China's share then grew more than twice as fast as India's. China was developed by 1994. India followed the same path and arrived in 2017 — a generation later.
Share of 20-to-24-year-olds who had finished nine years of school. Solid line: India. Dashed: China.
Money can vanish. Schooling can't.
In 1997 a financial crisis wiped out income across five Asian countries in a single year. The share of young people finishing school rose in every one of them anyway.
Gray: fall in income per person, 1997–98. Green: rise in the share of 20-to-24-year-olds who had finished nine years of school, 1995–2000. Korea's is a sliver because it was already at 99%.
It isn't only money. Bangladesh became developed in 2014 on about a sixth of the income Korea had when it did. Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war slowed its schooling gains and never reversed them. Korea and Taiwan built schools first and added pensions and health insurance later.
Take the schools away, and everything stops.
Cambodia lost its educated population under the Khmer Rouge. The share of its young people finishing school stood still for a decade and took a generation to recover. South Africa under apartheid deliberately kept most of its children out of a real education, and development stalled for decades.
Where it stops: the children still outside school
Every case above turned on one thing — children getting through school. The 273 million children and young people who are out of school today are where that stops. Where they are, country by country. We fund the charities that enroll them, keep them there, and teach them, in that order, until they finish secondary school — working through government schools, because a government's most important job is running schools, above all for children who are the first in their family ever to attend one.
DonateFull data and methodology at educationfirst.world. Sources: WCDE v3 (schooling), World Bank WDI (birth rates, life expectancy, income), UNESCO 2024 (out-of-school count).