Girls outperform boys in school. Then the gap reverses. The HCI+ explains why Brian StacyNandita Roy August 27, 2026 This page in: English

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/girls-outperform-boys-in-school--then-the-gap-reverses--the-hci- Girls now outperform boys in school in much of the world. Yet men end up with a 21 percent advantage in expected earnings globally. The reason is almost entirely about what happens after school, not during it. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures human capital through working life, to age 65. Its latest update adds three new features that make the data more actionable than ever: a female employment deep dive that pinpoints exactly where women fall behind in the labor market, a NEET deep dive tracking the millions of young people — disproportionately women — who are neither working nor in school between the ages of 18 and 25 and a revamped simulation tool.