How population changes are impacting primary education worldwide

Historically, the main demographic challenge for primary schools in many parts of the world has been responding to growing numbers of children, says University of Pennsylvania sociologist Emily Hannum. But as birth rates have decreased in many regions, a different question has emerged: How should school systems and governments respond to declines in the population of school-age children?

A new paper from Hannum and colleagues provides the first systematic accounting of global trends in school-age populations and the first global analysis of the interplay between child population dynamics and school resources. Their findings are published in Population and Development Review.

“This is important in the real world because demographic pressures are affecting educational systems throughout the system—from pre-K to higher ed—and across different places in the world,” Hannum says. “Understanding how depopulation may be affecting opportunity structures, inequality, and the lives of young people coming out of the school system is an important research agenda, given that a lot of the world is trending in this direction.”

Demographic trends vary across regions

Analyzing data from 1960 to 2020 on the number of primary-school-age children across the globe, the researchers identified three distinct groups:

• Increasing: In sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa, the school-age population has been increasing steadily.

• Plateauing: In North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia, school-age populations have recently peaked and are beginning to trend downward.

• Decreasing: In Europe, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, populations have been declining for much longer.

The study also highlights a financial divide. Per-pupil spending and GDP per capita are highest in regions with declining student populations and lowest in regions with population growth—meaning demographic expansion is concentrated in regions that already have limited school resources.

Teacher populations have increased worldwide

Changes in student populations have the potential to impact student-teacher ratios, which matters because class size is a key determinant of educational quality, research shows.

Interestingly, child-teacher and student-teacher ratios have decreased across regions from 1980 to 2020, because teacher growth has exceeded student growth.

The number of teachers has continued to expand even in regions where school-age populations have plateaued or declined, but at lower rates. As a result, a pattern of convergence is emerging—countries worldwide are experiencing student-teacher ratios approaching that of North America, which has maintained the lowest ratio.

Responses to declining student populations vary

As societies experience primary-age population reductions, the authors write, “choosing whether to downsize, relocate, or consolidate schools will remain a critical problem for policymakers”—and countries in Western Europe and East Asia have taken different approaches.

From 1980 to 2020, Austria closed 13% of primary schools amid a 12% decrease in the school-age population. But mainland China experienced an 83% reduction in primary schools while the school-age population decreased by 27%. Hannum notes that China’s reduction in schools is in part due to reliance on primary boarding schools to centralize resources in remote areas.

South Korea’s situation highlights urban-rural divides

One impact of urbanization in South Korea is that the share of the country’s primary-age students who are enrolled in metropolitan areas has risen from 44% in 1970 to 69% in 2020.

The number of nonmetropolitan primary teachers and schools decreased from 1980 to 2000, but opposition from parents, teachers, and civic groups has effectively halted large-scale rural school closures since, despite continued population decline. That means that the percentage of schools with fewer than 60 students is increasing, which creates challenges for funding and staffing.

“These developments underscore the difficulty of aligning educational infrastructure with demographic realities,” the authors write. “They further demonstrate that local political resistance can significantly shape or delay central government plans for educational provision, a consideration likely to grow in importance as more countries confront sustained declines in child population.”

Emily Hannum is the Stanley I. Sheerr Term Professor in the Social Sciences and a professor of sociology in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Graduate School of Education, and associate dean for the social sciences.

The other co-authors are Jeonghyeok Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at Yonsei University, and Fan Wang, an associate professor at the University of Houston and former economics Ph.D. student at Penn.