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Dataset · World Bank Group
Learning-Adjusted Years of School
4 years, 2010–2020 · 172 countries
Learning-adjusted years of school counts how many years of schooling a child can expect by age 18, then discounts them by how much children actually learn. A year in a classroom where pupils learn little counts for less than a year where they learn a lot.
This site holds every year from 2010 to 2020, read from World Bank Group’s own data and stored exactly as published.
Learning-Adjusted Years of School · the file
- Newest
- Learning-Adjusted Years of School, 2020
- Held
- 4 years · 597 rows
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
014 years
Every year
Newest first. Each opens the full table for that year, and each downloads as a CSV.
| Year | Countries | Change | Read | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning-Adjusted Years of School, 2020Newest | 172 | +6 | September 26, 2026 | CSV |
| Learning-Adjusted Years of School, 2018 | 166 | +10 | September 26, 2026 | CSV |
| Learning-Adjusted Years of School, 2017 | 156 | +53 | September 26, 2026 | CSV |
| Learning-Adjusted Years of School, 2010 | 103 | — | September 26, 2026 | CSV |
Every year in one file, one row per country per year: learning-adjusted-years-of-school-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
023 columns
What’s in the file
Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.
| Column | What it holds | Stored as | Range, 2020 | Distinct | Empty | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CountrycountryName | The country’s name, as this file spells it. | Text | — | 172 | 0 | |
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier | The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it. | Text · 3 letters | — | 172 | 0 | |
Learning-adjusted years of schoollaysHeadline | The headline figure: Learning-adjusted years of school (0–14). | Number · up to 14 decimals | 2.2065 Liberia12.8133 Singaporemiddle 7.9414 | 172 | 0 |
Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. A higher value is the better result.
03172 countries across every year
Who is covered
How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.
| 2010 | 2017 | 2018 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 25 | 45 | 45 | 46 |
| Americas | 15 | 22 | 28 | 28 |
| Asia | 24 | 43 | 43 | 46 |
| Europe | 37 | 38 | 38 | 39 |
| Oceania | 2 | 8 | 12 | 13 |
| All | 103 | 156 | 166 | 172 |
Who joined and who left
- 2020
+ Belarus
+ Brunei
+ Bhutan
+ Central African Republic
+ Fiji
+ Uzbekistan - 2018
+ Antigua and Barbuda
+ Dominica
+ Micronesia
+ Grenada
+ Saint Kitts and Nevis
+ Saint Lucia
+ Marshall Islands
+ Palau
+ Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
+ Samoa - 2017
+ Afghanistan
+ Angola
+ Armenia
+ Bangladesh
+ Bosnia and Herzegovina
+ China
+ DR Congo
+ Comoros
+ Dominican Republic
+ Ethiopia
+ Gabon
+ Ghana
+ Guinea
+ Guyana
+ Honduras
+ Haiti
+ India
+ Iraq
+ Jamaica
+ Kenya
+ Kyrgyzstan
+ Cambodia
+ Kiribati
+ Laos
+ Lebanon+ Liberia
+ Sri Lanka
+ Mali
+ Myanmar
+ Mongolia
+ Mozambique
+ Mauritania
+ Niger
+ Nigeria
+ Nicaragua
+ Nepal
+ Pakistan
+ Philippines
+ Papua New Guinea
+ Palestine
+ Rwanda
+ Sudan
+ Solomon Islands
+ Sierra Leone
+ El Salvador
+ South Sudan
+ Tajikistan
+ Tonga
+ Tuvalu
+ Tanzania
+ Vanuatu
+ Yemen
+ Zambia
Not in this dataset · 52 places this site covers
World Bank Group gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.
American Samoa
Andorra
Anguilla
Aruba
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Bermuda
Bolivia
British Virgin Islands
Cabo Verde
Cayman IslandsChannel Islands
Cook Islands
Cuba
Curaçao
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Faroe Islands
French Polynesia
Gibraltar
Greenland
Guam
Guinea-Bissau
Isle of Man
Kosovo
Libya
Liechtenstein
Maldives
Monaco
Montserrat
Nauru
New Caledonia
Niue
North Korea
Northern Mariana Islands
Puerto Rico
Saint Martin
San Marino
São Tomé and Príncipe
Sint Maarten
SomaliaSomaliland
Suriname
Syria
Taiwan
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
United States Virgin Islands
Vatican City
Venezuela04Provenance
Where it comes from
The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.
1 · Publisher
World Bank Group
2 · Their file
Learning-Adjusted Years of School 2020
3 · Read by this site
September 26, 2026
Imported by a script that parses each figure and writes it down unrounded.4 · Stored as
4 files, one per year
Each downloads as a CSV, or every year together as learning-adjusted-years-of-school-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv5 · Used on
Its statistic page, and every profile it measures
Precision
The headline is stored to 14 decimals, as published.
Rounded by this site
Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.
Changed by this site
Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.
The World Bank’s Human Capital Index, through its indicator API (HD.HCI.LAYS), covering 103 to 172 countries across the four editions.
05Reuse
Licence and credit
What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.
Licence · checked September 26, 2026
- Share and redistribute it
- Adapt it and build on it
- Use it commercially
- Credit the publisher
- Say what you changed
Share, adapt and use commercially. Credit the publisher and say if you changed anything.
A credit line
Source: World Bank Group, Learning-Adjusted Years of School, via Nations Inquiry.
Cite this dataset
World Bank Group. Learning-Adjusted Years of School, 2010–2020 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/learning-adjusted-years-of-school
The publisher’s own citation: World Bank. The Human Capital Index. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Method: Filmer, D., Rogers, H., Angrist, N. and Sabarwal, S. (2018), Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS): Defining a New Macro Measure of Education, Policy Research Working Paper 8591.
Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.
06Where it is used
Around the site
Where these numbers appear on this site, and the datasets nearest to it.
Charted
Learning-Adjusted Years of School by countryWho is highest, the map, the spread, who rose and fell, and the records.
Subjects
Near neighbours
- Government Spending on EducationUIS · 51 held · 1971–2023
- Upper Secondary Completion RateUIS · 45 held · 1981–2025
- Out-of-School Rate, PrimaryUIS · 32 held · 1981–2024
07Questions
Learning-Adjusted Years of School: questions and answers
What is the Learning-Adjusted Years of School?
Learning-adjusted years of school counts how many years of schooling a child can expect by age 18, then discounts them by how much children actually learn. A year in a classroom where pupils learn little counts for less than a year where they learn a lot.
Which years of the Learning-Adjusted Years of School can I download?
All 4, from 2010 to 2020, each as a CSV file, or every year together in one CSV.
Does World Bank Group rank countries on it?
No. World Bank Group publishes values only. The positions shown on this site are derived by ordering the published values, and are labelled as ours.
Can I use it commercially?
Yes, under CC BY 4.0, with credit to World Bank Group. The licence text is linked on this page.