School Attainment and Knowledge in Arab Countries

This paper deals with school attainment in the Arab economies. It is based on descriptive statistical analyses on Barro and Lee data for the period 1950-2010. The opportunities lost with the low level of school attainment and the corresponding time trends in Arab countries are discussed. The relatively slow speed of recovery in schooling could already be expressed by the lowest knowledge performances achieved by the economies of North Africa, Sudan and Yemen.