Across 183 countries, Out of school, primary and Regulatory quality rise and fall together at r = -0.48 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.18 (q = 0.045, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a very weak negative link remains.
Comparing countries across the middle half of out of school, primary, 1.03% to 9.99% of primary-age children, regulatory quality is worse by 0.337 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.0882 points.
Link before adjusting (r)-0.482p = 5.0e-12 · 183 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.180p = 0.015 · likely range [-0.32, -0.04]
p, allowing for regions0.005standard error 0.041 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.045across 17,292 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.
Out of school, primary · % of primary-age childrenlink with income -0.45 · moderate
Regulatory quality · index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)link with income +0.83 · proxy
“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
-0.482
5.0e-12
183
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted
-0.522
3.4e-14
183
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income
-0.180
0.015
183
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income
-0.288
8.2e-5
183
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 183 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: +0.302 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.199 (without IRN) to -0.107 (without GNQ). 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: GNQ (+0.073).
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
30
+0.04
Europe & Central Asia
50
-0.26
Latin America & Caribbean
32
-0.39
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan
18
-0.18
Sub-Saharan Africa
44
-0.45
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
61
-0.22
Middle third
61
-0.31
Richest third
61
-0.49
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
-0.32
Muslims
44
+0.13
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
23
-0.25
Never a European colony
19
+0.27
Spain
20
-0.55
United Kingdom
59
-0.24
By official ideology
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
Nationalist
25
+0.17
No strong official ideology
111
-0.24
By party system
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
A few parties banned
22
-0.24
No parties banned
119
-0.20
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 = -0.280 after dropping 19 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 30years. 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 = -0.111, 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 out of school, primary moved did not tend to see their regulatory quality move with it.
Across countries (adjusted)-0.180for comparison
Within countries-0.149each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.111q = 0.120 · 182 countries
Year-on-year changes-0.015q = 0.697
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.
3,168 country-years (one country in one year), 182 countries, 1996–2025, about 17 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 22% for Out of school, primary, 5% for Regulatory quality. 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): -0.111. 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
% of primary-age children
index (approx. -2.5 to 2.5)
Years
Equatorial Guinea GNQ
65.6%
-1.43
2015, 2025
Sudan SDN
43.8%
-1.74
2019, 2025
Cabo Verde CPV
41.8%
0.00808
2022, 2025
Niger NER
40.4%
-0.766
2024, 2025
Liberia LBR
38.3%
-0.865
2022, 2025
Central African Republic CAF
37.9%
-1.31
2012, 2025
Angola AGO
36.8%
-0.744
2023, 2025
Burkina Faso BFA
34.3%
-0.631
2024, 2025
Mali MLI
34%
-0.808
2023, 2025
Kenya KEN
32.9%
-0.373
2022, 2025
Lesotho LSO
32.2%
-0.488
2024, 2025
Guinea-Bissau GNB
30.5%
-1.23
2010, 2025
Solomon Islands SLB
30.1%
-0.951
2024, 2025
Gabon GAB
28.8%
-0.73
2019, 2025
Honduras HND
26.6%
-0.635
2024, 2025
World Bank, World Development Indicators Kaufmann, D. and A. Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Bank
UNESCO Institute for Statistics · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly
Children of primary-school age not enrolled at any level. Treated as measuring the same thing as gross primary enrolment, which is on the site. They are two ways of asking whether children are in school, so their agreement is not a finding.
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 17,292 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated V-Dem v16; V-Party v2. How the country data works · explore Out of school, primary and Regulatory quality
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Out of school, primary changes Regulatory quality, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Out of school, primary or Regulatory quality