The World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) brings together data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), other national household surveys and learning assessments from over 170 countries. Users can compare education outcomes between countries, and between groups within countries, according to factors that are associated with inequality, including wealth, gender, and ethnicity and location. Users can also create maps, charts, infographics and tables from the data, and download, print or share them online.
The database was first created as the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education (DME) dataset for the 2010 EFA Global Monitoring Report and re-launched as WIDE with interactive online features in 2012. In November 2018, the Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics established a partnership to jointly maintain and develop WIDE to support the monitoring of SDG 4 and in particular target 4.5 on equity.
The calculation of the different indicators was possible thanks to the data produced and made available by different international household programmes, country statistical offices, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) cross-national data center, international learning assessment programs, among others. We acknowledge the importance of those initiatives in making it possible to produce WIDE and measure the progress towards achieving the SDG4.
About the UNESCO Institute for Statistics
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the official statistical agency of UNESCO and the UN depository for global statistics in the fields of education, science, culture and communication. According to the Education 2030 Framework for Action, the UIS has the mandate to be the official source of cross-nationally comparable data on education and works directly with national statistical offices, line ministries and other statistical organizations to develop the methodologies, standards and indicators needed to monitor progress towards SDG 4.
The Global Education Monitoring Report is an editorially independent annual report hosted and published by UNESCO. According to the Education 2030 Framework for Action, it has the mandate to monitor progress on SDG 4, on education in the SDGs and on the implementation of national and international education strategies to help hold all relevant partners to account.
In September 2015, at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York, Member States formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The agenda contains 17 goals, one of which, SDG 4, is to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’. SDG 4 has seven targets and three means of implementation. Target 4.5 focuses on equity and calls upon Member States to ‘eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations’.
Special thanks go to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation for its partnership and generous contribution to develop the Education Inequality website.
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