In 2021, about 37.7 percent of the U.S. population who were aged 25 and above had graduated from college or another higher education institution, a slight decline from 37.9 the previous year. However, this is a significant increase from 1960, when only 7.7 percent of the U.S. population had graduated from college.

Demographics

Educational attainment varies by gender, location, race, and age throughout the United States. Asian-American and Pacific Islanders had the highest level of education, on average, while Massachusetts and the District of Colombia are areas home to the highest rates of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher. However, education levels are correlated with wealth. While public education is free up until the 12th grade, the cost of university is out of reach for many Americans, making social mobility increasingly difficult.

Earnings

White Americans with a professional degree earned the most money on average, compared to other educational levels and races. However, regardless of educational attainment, males typically earned far more on average compared to females. Despite the decreasing wage gap over the years in the country, it remains an issue to this day. Not only is there a large wage gap between males and females, but there is also a large income gap linked to race as well.

In an impressive increase from years past, 39 percent of women in the United States had completed four years or more of college in 2022. This figure is up from 3.8 percent of women in 1940. A significant increase can also be seen in males, with 36.2 percent of the U.S. male population having completed four years or more of college in 2022, up from 5.5 percent in 1940.

4- and 2-year colleges

In the United States, college students are able to choose between attending a 2-year postsecondary program and a 4-year postsecondary program. Generally, attending a 2-year program results in an Associate’s Degree, and 4-year programs result in a Bachelor’s Degree.

Many 2-year programs are designed so that attendees can transfer to a college or university offering a 4-year program upon completing their Associate’s. Completion of a 4-year program is the generally accepted standard for entry-level positions when looking for a job.

Earnings after college

Factors such as gender, degree achieved, and the level of postsecondary education can have an impact on employment and earnings later in life. Some Bachelor’s degrees continue to attract more male students than female, particularly in STEM fields, while liberal arts degrees such as education, languages and literatures, and communication tend to see higher female attendance.

All of these factors have an impact on earnings after college, and despite nearly the same rate of attendance within the American population between males and females, men with a Bachelor’s Degree continue to have higher weekly earnings on average than their female counterparts.

Highest certificate, diploma or degree by visible minority and selected characteristics (age group, gender, first official language spoken, immigrant status, period of immigration, generation status), for the population aged 15 years and over in private households in Canada, geographical regions of Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas with parts.

This map shows the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime. Data from Population Reference Bureau's 2017 World Population Data Sheet. The world's total fertility rate reported in 2017 was 2.5 as a whole. Replacement-Level fertility is widely recognized as 2.0 children per woman, so as to "replace" each parent in the next generation. Countries depicted in pink have a total fertility rate below replacement level whereas countries depicted in teal have a total fertility rate above replacement level. In countries with very high child mortality rates, a replacement level of 2.1 could be used, since not every child will survive into their reproductive years. Determinants of Total Fertility Rate include: women's education levels and opportunities, marriage rates among women of childbearing age (generally defined as 15-49), contraceptive usage and method mix/effectiveness, infant & child mortality rates, share of population living in urban areas, the importance of children as part of the labor force (or cost/penalty to women's labor force options that having children poses), and religious and cultural norms, among many other factors. This map was made using the Global Population and Maternal Health Indicators layer.

The average number of generations spent in each social class, mobility and immobility indices in Bangladesh.

Purpose: The goal of the current study is to analyze the substance use trends in Generation Z youth (in both middle and high school environments) and to determine if any correlation exists between substance use behaviors and demographic variables. Methods: Analysis is based on substance use data collected through the Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS) from 2009 to 2017 and the 2016 US census data. Results: Our results suggest that substance use in Gen Z adolescents is mainly linked to alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, vaping, and narcotic prescription drugs. Alcohol is the most prevalent high-risk substance used by 12th grade students with 69.8% of students having consumed alcohol over their lifetime. Vaping is the next highly used substance with 28.9% of students in 12th grade having vaped 30 day prior to the survey. There is a significant correlation among adolescents between smoking cigarettes and using smokeless tobacco. A student using either alcohol, cigarettes or smokeless tobacco is highly likely to use the other two substances as well. Adolescents from counties with a high Caucasian population were at high risk for cigarette and smokeless tobacco use, while the opposite held true for counties with a high number of foreign-born persons or higher Asian or Hispanic populations. Higher median household incomes and higher adult education levels in a county were both protective factors against smokeless tobacco use. Conclusions: Results of the study suggest that students start experimenting with high-risk substance use in early grades and to combat the prevalence, we suggest the importance of educating adolescents of the dangers of drug use in early grades.

In 2023, the average years of schooling in Thailand was highest for those who were between 15 and 39 years old, amounting to an average of 11.13 years of schooling. In comparison, mean years of schooling was lowest for the population who were 60 years and older, indicating that education is becoming more prevalent among the younger generation.

IntroductionTherapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is an integral part of pharmaceutical care. Antimicrobials are amongst the most commonly monitored medications. Therefore, identifying the gaps in antimicrobial pharmacokinetics and TDM knowledge and skills among pharmacists is crucial to optimize TDM application.Research questionWhat is the current knowledge, attitudes and perceived barriers of pharmacists in Qatar towards the application of antimicrobial TDM?Study designCross-sectional survey.MethodsThe psychometric validation of the survey underwent 3 stages: domain identification and item generation, content validation, and pilot test. The survey was divided into 4 domains (participant characteristics, knowledge, attitudes, and perceived barriers). It was developed in Survey Monkey and distributed to all pharmacists in Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) hospitals via email. Data was analyzed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Categorical and quantitative variables were expressed as frequencies with percentages and medians with interquartile ranges, respectively. Mann–Whitney U-test was used to test the effect of demographic and professional parameters on the knowledge scores. P values less than 0.05 were considered significant.ResultsForty-nine responses were collected. The median age of respondents was 34 years and 51% of them were males. Most respondents were clinical pharmacists (47%). On average, 44% of knowledge questions were correct, whereas 32% were incorrect and 23% were not sure of the answer. The median knowledge score was 5 out of 10 (interquartile range 2.5–6). Participants with post-graduate degrees or prior pharmacokinetic training showed trends towards higher knowledge scores. Online pharmacokinetics calculators were the most frequently used dose adjustment method. The top perceived barriers for the implementation of antimicrobial TDM were lack of knowledge and lack of educational sessions.ConclusionsAlbeit pharmacists in Qatar had modest level of knowledge about antimicrobial TDM, they had positive attitudes towards TDM and its implications in the clinical practice. Future plans should include providing TDM-related education activities.

As of 2024, the total number of teaching staff in South Africa amounted to 459,993. Of those, the majority were educators in public education entities, with 412,638. By contrast, independent education teachers represented around 11 percent of the cumulative number of teachers.

South Africa's education landscape is dominated by public schools, which account for over 90 percent of the country's nearly 25,000 educational institutions. As of 2024, there are 22,381 public schools compared to 2,469 independent schools. This stark contrast highlights the government's significant role in providing education to the nation's youth and underscores the challenges faced in ensuring quality education across such a vast network of schools. Regional disparities in school distribution and staffing KwaZulu-Natal leads the nation with 6,030 schools, followed by the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. However, when it comes to teaching staff, Gauteng takes the top spot with 98,140 educators, despite having fewer schools than KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. This disparity suggests varying student-to-teacher ratios across provinces, potentially impacting educational quality and outcomes. The concentration of independent school teachers in Gauteng also indicates a more diverse educational landscape in the province. Education's impact on employment prospects The distribution of schools and teachers across South Africa has far-reaching implications for the country's workforce. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, the unemployment rate stood at 32.1 percent, with individuals having less than a matric education constituting the largest portion of the unemployed. In contrast, university graduates had the lowest unemployment rate at approximately 10 percent. This stark difference underscores the critical importance of accessible, quality education in improving employment prospects and addressing South Africa's persistent unemployment challenges.

There is a gender gap in the global literacy rate. Although literacy rates have generally increased worldwide for both men and women, men are on average more literate than women. As of 2023, about 90.6 percent of men and a little less than 84.1 percent of women in the world were literate. Adult literacy rate is defined as the percentage of people aged 15 years and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life. Youth literacy rate Not only does the literacy gender gap concern adults, it also exists among the world’s younger generations aged 15 to 24. Despite an overall increase in literacy, young men are still more literate than young women. In fact, the global youth literacy rate as gender parity index was 0.98 as of 2023, indicating that young women are not yet as literate as young men. Gender pay gap Gender gaps occur in many different spheres of global society. One such issue concerns salary gender gaps in the professional life. Regarding the controlled gender pay gap, which measures the median salary for men and women with the same job and qualifications, women still earned less than men as of 2024. The difference was even bigger when measuring the median salary for all men and women. However, not everyone worries about gender pay gaps. According to a survey from 2021, 54 percent of the female respondents deemed the gender pay gap a real problem, compared to 45 percent of the male respondents.

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In the United States in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have seven children over the course of their lifetime. As factors such as technology, hygiene, medicine and education improved, women were having fewer children than before, reaching just two children per woman in 1940. This changed quite dramatically in the aftermath of the Second World War, rising sharply to over 3.5 children per woman in 1960 (children born between 1946 and 1964 are nowadays known as the 'Baby Boomer' generation, and they make up roughly twenty percent of todays US population). Due to the end of the baby boom and increased access to contraception, fertility reached it's lowest point in the US in 1980, where it was just 1.77. It did however rise to over two children per woman between 1995 and 2010, although it is expected to drop again by 2020, to just 1.78.