The Dataset

I chose to look at the World Bank data source suggested by the course. Specifically, I am interested in how education and gender equality has progressed worldwide throughout the years.

Question: How important is investment in education for gender equality?

Specific Questions

  1. How does a country's geographic region and income level affect gender-specific school enrollment over time? (Plot 2, 3, 4)
  2. Is school enrollment positively correlated with government expenditure in education over time, as we'd expect? (Plot 5, 6)
  3. Does increasing government spending on education help with gender equality in schools and in sex education?

First, what does the educational level data look like? For secondary education?

I will use this data as proxy for a relatively complete education for the population (K-12 in U.S. terms), based on the following definition of the statistic provided in the metadata: "Net enrollment rate is the ratio of children of official school age who are enrolled in school to the population of the corresponding official school age. Secondary education completes the provision of basic education that began at the primary level, and aims at laying the foundations for lifelong learning and human development, by offering more subject- or skill-oriented instruction using more specialized teachers."

All the 0 values appear to be missing data, not actual 0's, as I don't believe enrollment is 0% for so many countries and years, so those are removed.

Additionally, some of the country names and country codes aren't individual countries and rather are aggregates e.g. "European Union" or "Lower middle income". These conflate the data since they will essentially double count, so I removed them from the dataset I consider.

How does a country's geographic region and income level affect gender-specific school enrollment over time?

Plot #2

The income groups distribute over the different geographic locations, with a trend that higher income countries are in Europe and lower income countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

Plot #3

Higher income groups tend to have higher levels of school enrollment.

Now we can look at secondary school enrollment over time, in each income group.

Plot #4

The enrollment levels do change through the years. However, the change is not as drastic as the change in income groups. Interestingly, time matters more for the lower income groups and countries that start at lower enrollment rates.

Is school enrollment positively correlated with government expenditure in education over time, as we'd expect?

Plot #5

No, for any income group, government spending on education remains flat over the years.

Plot #6

Government spending on education sometimes has a modest effect on increasing school enrollment. However, it is quite dependent on the country.

Does increasing government spending on education help with gender equality in schools and in sex education?

Here, I calculate the gender difference in secondary school enrollment where positive differences mean there is a higher proportion of the male population in school than female, and vice versa for the negative differences.

Plot #7

The gender difference in school enrollment appears to depend on the income level of the country, where lower income countries tend to have more males in school, while higher income countries often have more females in school.

Plot #8

No, education expenditure as a percentage of GDP has no effect on achieving equal levels of school enrollment among males and females.

Plot #9

Income group is a strong determinator of contraceptive use: higher income level countries have higher rates of contraceptive prevalence. Geographic region does not seem to have an impact however.

Plot #10

Possibly, but the trend is likely driven by the income levels of the countries more than the education expenditure.