placestats

Adult literacy vs. Primary completion

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 117 countries, Adult literacy and Primary completion rise and fall together at r = +0.79 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.53, which could easily be chance (q = 0.091, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.

Comparing countries across the middle half of primary completion, 75.7% to 98.8% of children, adult literacy is better by 17.8% of adults at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 13.1% of adults.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.785p = 1.1e-25 · 117 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.528p = 1.2e-9 · likely range [+0.38, +0.65]
p, allowing for regions0.006standard error 0.116 · 6 regions
Check for luck (q)0.091across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Adult literacy · % of adultslink with income +0.73 · high
Primary completion · % of childrenlink with income +0.83 · proxy

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Adult literacy · % of adults →Primary completion · % of children →30.6%100%28.8%100%Afghanistan: 37.3% of adults, 55.4% of childrenAngola: 68.2% of adults, 65.2% of childrenAlbania: 97.7% of adults, 97.4% of childrenArgentina: 99.1% of adults, 96.7% of childrenArmenia: 99.8% of adults, 99.5% of childrenAzerbaijan: 99.8% of adults, 98.4% of childrenBurundi: 71.3% of adults, 60.5% of childrenBenin: 51.4% of adults, 70.1% of childrenBurkina Faso: 41.6% of adults, 72.2% of childrenBangladesh: 79% of adults, 90.8% of childrenBulgaria: 98.3% of adults, 99.1% of childrenBosnia and Herzegovina: 97% of adults, 99.8% of childrenBelarus: 99.9% of adults, 99.8% of childrenBelize: 87.9% of adults, 90.2% of childrenBolivia: 96.7% of adults, 98.5% of childrenBrazil: 94.7% of adults, 93% of childrenBhutan: 64.9% of adults, 93.6% of childrenCentral African Republic: 42.4% of adults, 30.8% of childrenChile: 96.4% of adults, 97.4% of childrenChina: 96.7% of adults, 99% of childrenCote d'Ivoire: 50% of adults, 78.8% of childrenCameroon: 72.6% of adults, 77.8% of childrenCongo, Dem. Rep.: 68.5% of adults, 68.4% of childrenColombia: 95.3% of adults, 95.5% of childrenComoros: 75.6% of adults, 86.1% of childrenCosta Rica: 97.4% of adults, 98.9% of childrenCyprus: 98.7% of adults, 99% of childrenDominican Republic: 94% of adults, 96.1% of childrenEcuador: 93.5% of adults, 99.5% of childrenEgypt, Arab Rep.: 79.5% of adults, 96.3% of childrenSpain: 99.7% of adults, 98.6% of childrenEstonia: 99.9% of adults, 99.5% of childrenEthiopia: 60.5% of adults, 64.6% of childrenGabon: 88.9% of adults, 74.3% of childrenGeorgia: 99.7% of adults, 99.8% of childrenGhana: 76.5% of adults, 79.1% of childrenGuinea: 39.6% of adults, 61% of childrenGambia, The: 51.6% of adults, 74.8% of childrenGuinea-Bissau: 63.9% of adults, 30.5% of childrenGuatemala: 82.1% of adults, 87% of childrenGuyana: 85.6% of adults, 99.2% of childrenHonduras: 88.3% of adults, 89.6% of childrenHaiti: 68% of adults, 50.5% of childrenIndonesia: 96% of adults, 98.9% of childrenIndia: 78.2% of adults, 96.5% of childrenIran, Islamic Rep.: 88.9% of adults, 96.7% of childrenIraq: 84.1% of adults, 83.3% of childrenItaly: 99.3% of adults, 99.9% of childrenJordan: 94.4% of adults, 98.5% of childrenCambodia: 71.9% of adults, 82.7% of childrenKiribati: 98.6% of adults, 94.4% of childrenLao PDR: 75.6% of adults, 70.1% of childrenLiberia: 59.4% of adults, 29.8% of childrenLesotho: 90.4% of adults, 79.8% of childrenLithuania: 99.8% of adults, 99.7% of childrenLatvia: 99.9% of adults, 99.6% of childrenMorocco: 64.3% of adults, 84.6% of childrenMoldova: 99.4% of adults, 98.8% of childrenMadagascar: 74.7% of adults, 54% of childrenMaldives: 98.2% of adults, 99.4% of childrenMexico: 95.6% of adults, 98.2% of childrenMali: 35.6% of adults, 50% of childrenMalta: 93.3% of adults, 98.1% of childrenMyanmar: 93.5% of adults, 89.8% of childrenMontenegro: 98.5% of adults, 98.9% of childrenMongolia: 98.6% of adults, 99.7% of childrenMozambique: 61.7% of adults, 53.5% of childrenMauritania: 59.5% of adults, 51.8% of childrenMauritius: 94.3% of adults, 99.9% of childrenMalawi: 70.2% of adults, 57.7% of childrenMalaysia: 95.8% of adults, 99.8% of childrenNamibia: 87.6% of adults, 86.3% of childrenNiger: 35.6% of adults, 77.5% of childrenNigeria: 70.4% of adults, 76.8% of childrenNicaragua: 87.3% of adults, 77.7% of childrenNepal: 68.7% of adults, 90.8% of childrenNaoero: 96.6% of adults, 89.2% of childrenPakistan: 58.9% of adults, 59.5% of childrenPanama: 96.2% of adults, 95.1% of childrenPeru: 93.7% of adults, 98.1% of childrenPhilippines: 98.5% of adults, 96.2% of childrenPapua New Guinea: 87% of adults, 66% of childrenPortugal: 94.5% of adults, 99.5% of childrenParaguay: 94.9% of adults, 94.9% of childrenWest Bank and Gaza: 97.9% of adults, 99.6% of childrenQatar: 97.8% of adults, 100% of childrenRomania: 99.2% of adults, 99.1% of childrenRussian Federation: 99.9% of adults, 99.7% of childrenRwanda: 78.8% of adults, 71.9% of childrenSenegal: 50.4% of adults, 65.7% of childrenSierra Leone: 43.6% of adults, 68.8% of childrenEl Salvador: 89.8% of adults, 93.7% of childrenSomalia, Fed. Rep.: 54.1% of adults, 28.8% of childrenSerbia: 99.3% of adults, 99.7% of childrenSao Tome and Principe: 87.4% of adults, 93.7% of childrenSuriname: 92.9% of adults, 91.3% of childrenEswatini: 90.8% of adults, 82.5% of childrenSyrian Arab Republic: 94.4% of adults, 98.1% of childrenChad: 30.6% of adults, 37.8% of childrenTogo: 72.6% of adults, 87.8% of childrenThailand: 91.1% of adults, 99.2% of childrenTurkmenistan: 99.9% of adults, 99.8% of childrenTimor-Leste: 69.4% of adults, 82.1% of childrenTonga: 99.5% of adults, 98.4% of childrenTunisia: 86.3% of adults, 96.9% of childrenTurkiye: 97.3% of adults, 98% of childrenTuvalu: 100% of adults, 98.8% of childrenTanzania: 78.2% of adults, 75.7% of childrenUganda: 77% of adults, 30.4% of childrenUruguay: 98.9% of adults, 97.9% of childrenUzbekistan: 100% of adults, 99.8% of childrenViet Nam: 96.1% of adults, 98.6% of childrenVanuatu: 88% of adults, 79.8% of childrenSamoa: 98% of adults, 98.5% of childrenSouth Africa: 91.2% of adults, 97.1% of childrenZambia: 71.8% of adults, 67.4% of childrenZimbabwe: 93.2% of adults, 86.9% of childrenBFACAFCIVGNBLBRNERRUSSOMTCDTKMUGAUZB

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.7851.1e-25117
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.8602.5e-35117
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.5281.2e-9117
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.6571.2e-15117

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 117 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.258 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.501 (without TCD) to +0.574 (without UGA). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: UGA (+0.046).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
East Asia & Pacific18+0.69
Europe & Central Asia22+0.28
Latin America & Caribbean21+0.76
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan12+0.89
Sub-Saharan Africa39+0.30

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third39+0.42
Middle third39+0.69
Richest third39+0.53

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians68+0.61
Muslims35+0.54

By last european coloniser

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
France21+0.46
Never a European colony14+0.07
Spain18+0.58
United Kingdom35+0.51

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.606 after dropping 6 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 35years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

The link shows up within countries over time (r = +0.515) but mostly disappears in year-to-year changes (r = +0.143). That points to slow trends particular to each country, not the two measures moving together from year to year.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.528for comparison
Within countries+0.788each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.515q = 0.000 · 72 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.143q = 0.398
Read with care.
  • Almost all of the second indicator's variation is between countries, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.
  • Much of the within-country association disappears once shared global year effects are removed, which points to a common worldwide trend rather than a country-level relationship.
  • The association is much weaker in year-on-year changes than in levels, which points to shared country-specific trends.

737 country-years (one country in one year), 72 countries, 1990–2024, about 10 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 13% for Adult literacy, 6% for Primary completion. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.60−0.6-100+10years Primary completion trails Adult literacy →lag -10: r = 0.383 (n = 666)lag -9: r = 0.403 (n = 673)lag -8: r = 0.418 (n = 677)lag -7: r = 0.437 (n = 680)lag -6: r = 0.462 (n = 692)lag -5: r = 0.454 (n = 694)lag -4: r = 0.472 (n = 698)lag -3: r = 0.468 (n = 705)lag -2: r = 0.481 (n = 710)lag -1: r = 0.537 (n = 726)lag +0: r = 0.515 (n = 737)lag +1: r = 0.516 (n = 737)lag +2: r = 0.520 (n = 713)lag +3: r = 0.526 (n = 686)lag +4: r = 0.504 (n = 646)lag +5: r = 0.534 (n = 607)lag +6: r = 0.525 (n = 567)lag +7: r = 0.539 (n = 496)lag +8: r = 0.573 (n = 436)lag +9: r = 0.538 (n = 388)lag +10: r = 0.458 (n = 339)

Same year (lag 0): +0.515. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.57 at lag +8) is higher than the same-year one by 0.06. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


% of adults
% of children		Years
Uzbekistan UZB100%99.8%2022, 2025
Tuvalu TUV100%98.8%2022, 2025
Russian Federation RUS99.9%99.7%2021, 2025
Turkmenistan TKM99.9%99.8%2022, 2025
Latvia LVA99.9%99.6%2011, 2025
Estonia EST99.9%99.5%2011, 2025
Belarus BLR99.9%99.8%2019, 2025
Armenia ARM99.8%99.5%2023, 2025
Lithuania LTU99.8%99.7%2011, 2025
Azerbaijan AZE99.8%98.4%2023, 2025
Spain ESP99.7%98.6%2021, 2025
Georgia GEO99.7%99.8%2024, 2025
Tonga TON99.5%98.4%2023, 2025
Moldova MDA99.4%98.8%2014, 2025
Italy ITA99.3%99.9%2019, 2025

World Bank, World Development Indicators
UNESCO Institute for Statistics, SDG indicator 4.1.2 modelled estimates

Sources

Adult literacy

Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above)

UNESCO Institute for Statistics · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Reported only in census or survey years for most countries, so the data are sparse and uneven rather than yearly.

Primary completion

Primary completion rate, modelled estimate

UNESCO Institute for Statistics · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated annual

The share of children who finish primary school. UNESCO estimates it from household surveys and uses a statistical model to fill in across years. It is not the World Bank's primary completion rate, which is a ratio built from school enrolment counts of children entering the last grade. This one asks whether the child actually finished.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 6 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Adult literacy and Primary completion

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Adult literacy changes Primary completion, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Adult literacy or Primary completion