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Atlas/Investigations/Compare Countries Without Inventing National IQ
Official model

Compare Countries Without Inventing National IQ

HLO, Learning Poverty, minimum proficiency, and HCI+ answer different questions.

QuestionHow can countries be compared while preserving what each education and human-capital indicator means?
01

Start with four separate questions

HLO harmonizes assessment performance; Learning Poverty combines reading proficiency and schooling; UIS reports SDG proficiency; HCI+ adds wider health and employment context.

BrazilFinlandIndiaSingapore
02

Match year, population, and method

A defensible comparison selects compatible releases and dimensions and exposes missing or modeled observations.

United StatesSouth Africa
03

Do not perform an IQ conversion

No launch record transforms educational or human-capital indicators into IQ. The scales, populations, and purposes are different.

BrazilFinlandIndiaSingapore
What the evidence supports

Compare like with like, keep the source year and population visible, and never relabel these indicators as official country IQ.

Primary trail

Sources used in this investigation

official datasetHarmonized Learning Outcomes (HLO) DatabaseWorld Bank · 2021official datasetLearning Poverty Global Database: Historical Data and Sub-componentsWorld Bank · 2024official datasetHuman Capital Index PlusWorld Bank · 2026official datasetUIS Data Browser: Sustainable Development Goal 4UNESCO Institute for Statistics · 2025