Population Changes and Emerging Challenges to Global Primary Education Provision

Emily Hannum, Jeonghyeok Kim and Fan Wang

Population and Development Review, 2026, vol. 52, issue 2, 705-729

Abstract: Global demographic changes in recent decades have sharply altered the contexts in which governments provide education. Focusing on primary education, we demonstrate, first, that recent demographic trends have been highly polarizing for education systems worldwide. Persistent expansionary pressures burden some of the least‐resourced educational systems, whereas these pressures are reversing in wealthier countries with higher educational expenditures. Second, we document that global educational systems have adapted to narrow gaps in student‐ or child‐teacher ratios, despite polarizing demographic trends. Third, we show that system responses vary where school‐age cohorts are declining, although little is known about the impacts of system responses. And, finally, examining Korea, a case at the leading edge of the transition to population scarcity, we demonstrate that educational system consolidation can introduce new salience to geospatial hierarchies and the political economy of allocative decisions. Policy decentralization and popular resistance stymied a trend in which nonmetropolitan areas bore the brunt of primary school closures and teacher losses, while metropolitan areas saw increases in schools and teachers despite student declines. Research is sorely needed to understand how national educational systems are impacted by and adapting to the disparate forces of population growth and scarcity.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.70059

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popdev:v:52:y:2026:i:2:p:705-729

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0098-7921

Access Statistics for this article

Population and Development Review is currently edited by Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll

More articles in Population and Development Review from The Population Council, Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().