Do Gender Inequality Index and Tertiary enrollment go together across countries?

Across 157 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.81, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.84.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 1990-2023, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.206 (146 countries, 2,817 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.029.

Does Gender Inequality Index cause Tertiary enrollment?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Gender Inequality Index vs. Tertiary enrollment

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 157 countries, Gender Inequality Index and Tertiary enrollment rise and fall together at r = -0.81 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.46 (q = 0.0055, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a moderate negative link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of gender inequality index, 0.121 to 0.482 points, tertiary enrollment is worse by 48.7% gross at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 38.3% gross.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.805p = 5.6e-37 · 157 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.464p = 1.1e-9 · likely range [-0.58, -0.33]

p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.052 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.006across 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.

Gender Inequality Index · index, 0 to 1link with income -0.89 · proxy

Tertiary enrollment · % grosslink with income +0.75 · high

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

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.805	5.6e-37	157
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.844	9.3e-44	157
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.464	1.1e-9	157
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.476	3.4e-10	157

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 157 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: +0.341 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.493 (without CYP) to -0.429 (without GUY). 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: GUY (+0.035).

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.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	20	-0.61
Europe & Central Asia	46	-0.10
Latin America & Caribbean	25	-0.56
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	19	-0.08
Sub-Saharan Africa	39	-0.39

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.

	n	r
Poorest third	53	-0.52
Middle third	52	-0.39
Richest third	52	-0.43

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.

	n	r
Christians	94	-0.46
Muslims	42	-0.46

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	22	-0.50
Never a European colony	20	-0.16
Spain	17	-0.64
United Kingdom	49	-0.47

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 = -0.472 after dropping 1 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 34years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.206, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose gender inequality index moved did not tend to see their tertiary enrollment move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.464for comparison

Within countries-0.629each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.206q = 0.059 · 146 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.029q = 0.424

Read with care.

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.

2,817 country-years (one country in one year), 146 countries, 1990–2023, about 19 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 10% for Gender Inequality Index, 17% for Tertiary enrollment. 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

Same year (lag 0): -0.206. 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 data

	index, 0 to 1	% gross	Years
Nigeria NGA	0.677	9.74%	2023, 2011
Chad TCD	0.67	4.4%	2023, 2020
Afghanistan AFG	0.661	10.9%	2023, 2020
Liberia LBR	0.646	10.8%	2023, 2012
Mali MLI	0.612	5.13%	2023, 2015
Guinea GIN	0.609	10.9%	2023, 2014
Congo, Dem. Rep. COD	0.604	6.38%	2023, 2020
Mauritania MRT	0.603	5.97%	2023, 2020
Niger NER	0.591	4.15%	2023, 2019
Cote d'Ivoire CIV	0.589	12.3%	2023, 2024
Sudan SDN	0.588	15.9%	2023, 2015
Madagascar MDG	0.584	6.15%	2023
Malawi MWI	0.581	2.71%	2023, 2022
Gambia, The GMB	0.578	13.5%	2023, 2024
Benin BEN	0.573	10.2%	2023, 2022

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2025
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Gender Inequality Index

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated annual

Built from deaths in childbirth, births to teenagers, seats in parliament, secondary schooling, and the share of women and men in the workforce. Five of those inputs are on the site and flagged. It is kept out of the gender score, for the same reason the HDI is kept out of the economy score.

Tertiary enrollment

School enrollment, tertiary (% gross)

UNESCO Institute for Statistics · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

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 7 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 Gender Inequality Index and Tertiary enrollment

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Gender Inequality Index changes Tertiary enrollment, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.