International comparisons of educational attainment

Many theories of economic growth stress the role of human capital in the form of education, but empirical studies have been hampered by inadequate data. We describe a data set on educational attainment for 129 countries over five-year periods from 1960 to 1985. Census/survey figures fill over 40% of the cells, and the remainder are estimated from school-enrollment data by a perpetualinventory method. The data refer to male and female attainment of the adult population at four levels: no schooling, primary, secondary, and higher. We also provide a rough breakdown into incomplete and complete attainment at the three levels of schooling.