Less corruption linked to more girls in school
Comparing Executive Corruption Index with Enrolment in primary education, female (number), per unit of GDP across 160 countries, 2025–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.60
- Holding size constant
- +0.44
- Countries compared
- 160
- Period
- 2025–2025
What might link these
A potential link between these indicators could be the overall quality of governance, which affects both education and corruption levels. A careful reader should consider that cultural factors, such as societal attitudes towards women's education, might also play a role. A likely confounder could be the level of democratic governance in a country.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. This correlation does not necessarily imply that reducing corruption directly leads to increased female primary education enrolment.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.