Turkey ranks last in education area of OECD well-being index

ISTANBUL

Turkey has come last in the education area of the OECD Regional Well-Being index’s latest findings, which compares well-being of the 362 regions of its 34 member countries on 11 topics the OECD identified as essential.

Turkey, along with Mexico, scored zero points out of 10, placing it at the bottom of the list, while the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia obtained full scores, 10. Estonia and the U.S. followed the top three countries with 9.6 and 9.2 points respectively. Germany, the U.K. and France received 8.69, 7.73, and 7.57 scores respectively. 

The OECD Regional Well-being web tool shows the factors contributing to well-being in different regions, allowing to compare Turkey with 361 other OECD regions based on 11 topics central to the quality of people’s lives. 

In accordance, the education criteria takes the share of the labor force with at least secondary education among the population into account and compares these percentages across the regions. 

Out of the 26 regions the OECD allocated for Turkey, Ankara displayed the best performance with 4.4 points, followed by Istanbul with 2.4 points and İzmir and the southeast of the Marmara region with 2.2. points. The 13 other regions of Turkey on the other hand scored zero, as the share of labor force with at least secondary education in these places stayed below 35 percent.