Education as a dimension of human development: A Provincial-level Education Index for Ecuador

Finally, Fig 5 shows the PEI values of those Ecuadorian provinces which had the best and worst educational development, together with the values of the educational component of the HDI of LAC countries that had an upper-middle income in 2014. As can be seen, the educa- tional development of Ecuadorian provinces with a poorer PEI was lower than that of all the countries analyzed, except Paraguay, whose education index was lower than the PEI of Los Rı´os and Orellana. Regarding the provinces with the highest PEI, Tungurahua and Guayas were only outperformed by Peru and Costa Rica, while only Costa Rica showed better results than Loja and Pastaza. It is worth highlighting the case of Pichincha, which displayed greater educational well-being than all the LAC countries considered. Discussion and conclusions The Provincial-level Education Index shows an increase in the educational development of Ecuador’s provinces in the period under analysis. Yet despite this overall improvement, differ- ences continue to exist. Thus, 12 of the 21 Ecuadorian provinces had a medium educational development in 2014 (PEI between 0.606 and 0.657), while the rest reached a high educational development (PEI between 0.677 and 0.751), according to the thresholds calculated from the distribution of the UNDP´s HDI educational index for that year. It is also worth mentioning Table 4. Descriptive summaries of education indicators. Mean years of schooling Expected years of schooling 2006 2014 2006 2014 Mean 7.233 8.118 12.879 13.974 Standard deviation 0.809 0.881 0.642 0.480

Variation coefficient 0.112 0.108 0.050 0.034 Square of the variation coefficient 0.013 0.012 0.002 0.001 Maximum 9.285 10.248 14.284 14.768 Minimum 5.902 6.144 11.549 12.979 Range 3.383 4.104 2.735 1.789 Note: approximate results for the provinces of Amazonia in 2006 due to lack of representativeness in the survey. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270932.t004 Fig 4. Provincial contribution to educational development overall inequality (%). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270932.g004 PLOS ONE Education as a dimension of Human development PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270932 July 8, 2022 15 / 27