Primary school life expectancy, adjusted gender parity index
What you should know about this indicator
- In many countries, boys and girls do not spend the same amount of time in primary school — this indicator shows how close they are to parity in expected school duration at the primary level.
- It focuses specifically on school life expectancy in primary education, comparing the average number of years girls and boys are expected to spend in primary school based on current age-specific enrollment rates.
- The adjusted gender parity index (GPIA) is calculated by dividing the female school life expectancy in primary education by the male school life expectancy. If the result exceeds 1, it is inverted and subtracted from 2 to produce a symmetrical scale from 0 to 2, with 1 representing perfect parity.
- A value of 1 means boys and girls are expected to spend the same number of years in primary school. Values below 1 indicate boys are expected to spend more time in school; values above 1 indicate girls are.
- This indicator assumes current enrollment trends continue over time and includes all children, even those who may never enrol, giving a comprehensive view of participation in primary education.
- The data comes from administrative sources such as school censuses and registers, as well as population estimates by age, typically provided by national statistical offices or the United Nations Population Division.
- Disaggregated by sex, this indicator helps identify gender gaps in access to and retention in primary schooling.
- As with all expectancy-based indicators, it does not reflect actual completion or quality of education and may not account for repetition or part-time attendance, which can vary across contexts.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Primary school life expectancy, adjusted gender parity index”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2023) - “Global Education”. Data adapted from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Primary school life expectancy, adjusted gender parity index” [dataset]. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) - Education” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.html (archived on March 4, 2026).Download
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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-life-expectancy-primary-gender-parity-index-gpi.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear