Government education expenditure by level, % of GDP (UNESCO UIS)

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Government expenditure on education by level of education, as a percentage of GDP, by country/region and year, from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (https://api.uis.unesco.org/api/public/data/indicators). Each row is one (year, area, indicator): pre-primary (XGDP.02.FSGOV), primary (XGDP.1.FSGOV), lower secondary (XGDP.2.FSGOV), upper secondary (XGDP.3.FSGOV), post-secondary non-tertiary (XGDP.4.FSGOV) and tertiary (XGDP.5T8.FSGOV) education. Summing the six levels approximates total public education spending as % of GDP. Method: keyless UIS Data API v1; rows with qualifier UIS_EST/NAT_EST are estimates. Units: percent of GDP. Caveats: secondary-level breakdowns start in 1997; some countries report only ministry-of-education spending, excluding other ministries; latest 1-2 years provisional and revised. Coverage: worldwide, 1970 to 2025 (1997+ for secondary levels), yearly granularity. Provenance: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, CC BY-SA 4.0 — please cite the UIS with the extraction date. Primary key: (indicator_id, area, year). Join keys: iso3 (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3), year. Cadence: refreshed yearly. Sample use: filter indicator_id='XGDP.5T8.FSGOV' to compare tertiary education spending across countries.

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
Rows: 16,564
Columns: 6
Source cadence: Yearly
Last refreshed: Sep 23, 2026
Theme: education

Column	Type	Description
year	integer	Reference year of the observation.
iso3	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code; null for UIS regional aggregates.
area	string	Country name (resolved from the ISO code via hub.normalize) or the UIS regional aggregate label verbatim; with indicator_id and year forms the primary key.
indicator_id	string	UIS indicator code (e.g. LR.AG15T99, CR.1).
indicator_label	string	Human-readable UIS indicator label, from the SDG 4 monitoring framework.
value_pct	float	Indicator value in percent. (unit: percent)

First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.

year	iso3	area	indicator_id	indicator_label	value_pct
1,971	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
1,975	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,010	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,011	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,012	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,013	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,015	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,016	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
2,017	AFG	Afghanistan	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0
1,994	ALB	Albania	XGDP.02.FSGOV	Government expenditure on pre-primary education as % of GDP (%)	0.214

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/unesco_uis/unesco_uis_education_expenditure" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/unesco_uis/unesco_uis_education_expenditure").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/unesco_uis/unesco_uis_education_expenditure

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.

Cite this snapshot

Pinned to snapshot 20260923T072552Z-c8b6aed39c68 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.

APA

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). (2026). Government education expenditure by level, % of GDP (UNESCO UIS) [Data set, snapshot 20260923T072552Z-c8b6aed39c68, sha256 c8b6aed39c68]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-23, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/unesco_uis/unesco_uis_education_expenditure?snapshot=20260923T072552Z-c8b6aed39c68

BibTeX

@misc{dz_unesco_uis_unesco_uis_education_expendit_c8b6aed3,
  title        = {{Government education expenditure by level, \% of GDP (UNESCO UIS)}},
  author       = {{UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Datazimuts},
  howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/unesco_uis/unesco_uis_education_expenditure?snapshot=20260923T072552Z-c8b6aed39c68}},
  note         = {Snapshot 20260923T072552Z-c8b6aed39c68, sha256 c8b6aed39c6847521673a4c3de81b5f8c56a2449bb081c9cbf7b6e5eb4af3742; accessed 2026-09-23}
}

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Government education expenditure by level, % of GDP (UNESCO UIS)

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