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

Educational development in Ecuador’s provinces: The Provincial-level Education Index and its components Our use of the micro-databases of the two rounds of the Ecuadorian LSMS was established on a selection of identification and education variables of the population surveyed. This enabled us to estimate the indicators that make up the PEI for Ecuadorian provinces, following the method for the education index of the HDI applied by the UNDP since 2010. These indicators, which respectively reflect a population’s levels of both current and future education, are mean years of schooling (MY) and expected years of schooling (EY) [84]. Based on the UNESCO definitions [85], both indicators are felt to be of interest by the INEC within the educational dimension of well-being [86]. Thus, for each province, we obtained the MY indicator as an average of school years studied by the population aged 25 or over: MY ¼ X j j � nj N where nj is the number of individuals with j years of education out of a total of N individuals aged 25 and over. Undoubtedly, this indicator was the most difficult to estimate given that different education systems have existed (still exist) in Ecuador at the same time, due to the enactment, withdrawal and, on occasions, intertwining of successive reforms. It should therefore be remembered that those people surveyed might have gone through one education system, another, or indeed both. This complex scenario is further compounded by the fact that neither of the two rounds of the LSMS offers a direct question addressing the number of years an individual has spent in

the education system, forcing us to merge various answers from each respondent to obtain the required information. S3 and S4 Tables sum up the main aspects of the procedure undertaken to estimate the mean years of schooling indicator for each province using the fifth and sixth round of the LSMS, respectively. The first column of each table specifies the possible answers to the ques- tion in the questionnaire concerning the “highest level of education attended or completed” which, together with the “highest year of education passed” (second column of both tables), provided us with a base from which to obtain the number of years of schooling of the respon- dent. The third column sets out the maximum number of years an individual attended school, according to the level of education indicated in their answer to the previous questions. The last column contains the rest of the questions used, in addition to some of the technical issues we considered when interpreting certain answers. Finally, to estimate the mean years of schooling indicator, we multiplied the number of years of schooling of each individual by the expansion factor. To estimate the EY indicator for each province, we followed the definition proposed by the INEC to calculate this indicator at a national scale [78, 82]. To do this, we added the atten- dance (or enrolment) rates for each age between 5 and 17, together with the corresponding gross attendance (or enrolment) rate for the 18–22 aged group multiplied by five: EY ¼ X 17 j¼5 uj vj þ X 22 j¼18 uj X 22 j¼18 vj � 5 PLOS ONE

Education as a dimension of Human development PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270932 July 8, 2022 7 / 27