Mean years of schooling vs. Under-5 mortality
Holds up after adjusting for income
Across 186 countries, Mean years of schooling and Under-5 mortality rise and fall together at r = -0.75 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.31 (q = 0.028, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a weak negative link remains.
Comparing countries across the middle half of mean years of schooling, 6.81 to 11.6 years, under-5 mortality is better by 28.3 per 1,000 live births at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 12.8 per 1,000 live births.
Link before adjusting (r)-0.754p = 1.8e-35 · 186 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.314p = 1.4e-5 · likely range [-0.44, -0.18]
p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.058 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.028across 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.
Mean years of schooling · yearslink with income +0.82 · proxy
Under-5 mortality · per 1,000 live birthslink with income -0.86 · 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
best-fit line line after adjusting
Four ways to measure the link
| Method | r | p | Countries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (Pearson), not adjusted | -0.754 | 1.8e-35 | 186 |
| By rank (Spearman), not adjusted | -0.800 | 1.2e-42 | 186 |
| Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income | -0.314 | 1.4e-5 | 186 |
| By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income | -0.319 | 9.7e-6 | 186 |
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 186 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: +0.441 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.338 (without COD) to -0.290 (without GIN). 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: COD (-0.024).
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 | 29 | -0.13 | |
| Europe & Central Asia | 50 | -0.06 | |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 31 | -0.34 | |
| Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan | 22 | -0.41 | |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 46 | -0.20 |
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 | 62 | -0.38 | |
| Middle third | 62 | +0.00 | |
| Richest third | 62 | -0.51 |
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 | 108 | -0.16 | |
| Muslims | 49 | -0.42 |
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.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| France | 25 | -0.47 | |
| Never a European colony | 21 | -0.05 | |
| Spain | 20 | -0.15 | |
| United Kingdom | 63 | -0.31 |
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 = -0.312 after dropping 9 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.
Loading…
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.
The link shows up within countries over time (r = +0.144) but mostly disappears in year-to-year changes (r = +0.011). That points to slow trends particular to each country, not the two measures moving together from year to year.
Across countries (adjusted)-0.314for comparison
Within countries-0.495each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.144q = 0.039 · 190 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.011q = 0.282
The direction flips. Comparing each country only with itself gives -0.50. Also taking out what happened to the whole world each year gives +0.14. So the first figure was picking up a trend both measures share with worldwide progress, not a link between them.
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.
6,011 country-years (one country in one year), 190 countries, 1990–2023, about 32 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 11% for Mean years of schooling, 22% for Under-5 mortality. 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): +0.144. 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.
This curve peaks at the edge of the window (lag +10), so it is still drifting where the search stops. That pattern usually reflects a slow trend left over in the data, not a link with real timing. The peak value should not be read as the “true” link at the right lag.
The data
years | per 1,000 live births | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany DEU | 14.3 | 3.7 | 2023, 2024 |
| Switzerland CHE | 13.9 | 3.9 | 2023, 2024 |
| United States USA | 13.9 | 6.5 | 2023, 2024 |
| Iceland ISL | 13.9 | 2.8 | 2023, 2024 |
| Canada CAN | 13.9 | 5.4 | 2023, 2024 |
| Lithuania LTU | 13.6 | 3.4 | 2023, 2024 |
| Estonia EST | 13.6 | 2 | 2023, 2024 |
| Israel ISR | 13.5 | 3.3 | 2023, 2024 |
| United Kingdom GBR | 13.5 | 4.7 | 2023, 2024 |
| Latvia LVA | 13.4 | 2.5 | 2023, 2024 |
| Palau PLW | 13.3 | 21.4 | 2023, 2024 |
| Poland POL | 13.2 | 4.2 | 2023, 2024 |
| Norway NOR | 13.1 | 2.5 | 2023, 2024 |
| Slovak Republic SVK | 13.1 | 6.3 | 2023, 2024 |
| Denmark DNK | 13 | 4 | 2023, 2024 |
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2025
World Bank, World Development Indicators
Sources
Mean years of schooling
Mean years of schooling, adults aged 25 and over
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated annual
The schooling adults actually completed, decades ago for most of them. Expected schooling looks ahead at children; this looks back at adults. It is the one to read for the education of the workforce rather than of children.
Under-5 mortality
Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000 live births)
World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly
How this was computed
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2023–2024. 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 Mean years of schooling and Under-5 mortality
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Mean years of schooling changes Under-5 mortality, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Mean years of schooling or Under-5 mortality
- Maternal mortality vs Under-5 mortality before +0.88 → after adjusting +0.74
- Adult literacy vs Mean years of schooling before +0.87 → after adjusting +0.72
- Electricity access vs Under-5 mortality before -0.83 → after adjusting -0.60
- Birth rate vs Under-5 mortality before +0.86 → after adjusting +0.60
- Fertility rate vs Under-5 mortality before +0.85 → after adjusting +0.59
- Basic sanitation vs Under-5 mortality before -0.84 → after adjusting -0.58
- Adult literacy vs Under-5 mortality before -0.81 → after adjusting -0.57
- Skilled birth attendance vs Under-5 mortality before -0.78 → after adjusting -0.53