 Peruvian education sucks. I don't think there's one person in Peru that would disagree with that statement. It's gotten to the point where we pretty much just accept it and we don't even ask why anymore. But I do. Whoever said money doesn't buy happiness has never had to pay rent with a credit card or eat ramen for weeks on end because they were broke. Money does buy happiness, at least to a point. Money buys comfort and comfort is essential for happiness. A guy named Maslow explained this through his hierarchy of needs. I bring this up because the same hierarchy applies to education. If you don't even have the basic physical infrastructure for school, you're certainly not going to create an environment where self-actualization can occur. Money is vital to education. That's why one of the most common statistics you'll hear about education is how much governments spend on it. This is typically reported as a percentage of gross domestic product or GDP. GDP, and I am extremely oversimplifying here, is just how much money your country makes in a year. What's that way down there? Let's take a closer look. This chart shows the percent of GDP that 23 different countries dedicate to their education systems. Shall we meet our 23 countries? Because this is a video about Peru, I decided to pool data on as many countries from Latin America as possible for the sake of comparison. But since we helped people study abroad, I also grabbed some popular destination countries like Denmark. I also left a couple of curiosities in here like Israel and Jamaica, and there's Peru. Each one of these rings represents 1% of GDP dedicated to education. Mexico spends 4.52% of its GDP on education, so they sit perfectly in the middle of the four ring. As does Colombia, 4.53%. Argentina's 5.46 forced our little number five out of the way. And would you look at that? The third best country on this chart is Belize at a whopping 7.5%. The only countries that top that are Denmark and Norway, which come also close to breaking into that eight ring. At 7.91%, they give education the biggest slice of pie of any country in the world. This chart is helpful because it gives us a good idea of how much a country prioritizes education. Experts recommend about 6% of GDP should go to education. Only 17 countries in the world actually do that. At the same time, this chart has its problems. I mean, if we just stick to this metric, you'd think that Brazil's education system with 6.32% must crush Germany's, which receives 4.9%. Do you really think Peru's education system funded with 3.93% of GDP is better than Ireland's, which gets only 3.5%? One of the lowest on this list? We need more data. The thing about education spending is that it doesn't go to everyone. It mostly goes to young people. So a country with more young people needs more money for education. On top of that, countries don't divide their education spending equally between primary, secondary, and higher education. Now, since universities care about what you do in high school, I decided to pull government spending on secondary students as a percentage of GDP per capita. By using GDP per capita, we account for population differences between countries. That's a lot of lines. I covered a 10-year span because I was curious to see if things are improving or not. Let's just take a look at our Latin American countries for a moment. Up top, we've got Belize, which gives its high schoolers over a quarter of GDP per capita. Costa Rica woke up in the year 2008 and clearly started pouring money into its high schoolers. Argentina and Brazil stick close together except for the times when Argentina's economy implodes, which is often. And then there's a big gap. There's Chile, trying its hardest to climb the ranks. Mexico's line fascinates me. It's so flat. They're on cruise control. It's also kind of infuriating. Your line might go down because your economy went up so a lower percentage gives you the same amount of money. It might go up because your country decided to invest more into education. Mexico's line does not act or react. It just is. Colombian El Salvador take huge leaps up to 15%, but then they go their separate ways. And then there's Peru. Peru limps forward, never sustaining any real momentum. Two up, two down, one up, one down. Two up, and we're flat. At least it's not dead last. No, that honor goes to these sad little lines down here. Ecuador and Guatemala. See, numbers can lie. Ecuador's 5% of GDP makes it look like everything's A-okay. But here we see a country that barely funds its high schools. The only reason it's not dead last on this list is because Guatemala managed to steal last place by a fraction of a percent. Now let's look at our European and American friends. They dominate the upper half of the chart. There's Spain heading downstairs to see what its kids are up to. And Italy heard Spain was having a party down there and decided to join. Ireland apparently said, hold my beer. Don't worry, Ireland. It'll all make sense soon. All in all, this chart shows us that more developed countries invest a much greater share of their wealth into their high schools than Latin America does. But even this chart doesn't tell us the whole story. We've accounted for population, but not wealth itself. Percentages are relative, but Lees in France ended up at almost the exact same spot here. But clearly France's GDP must be much larger so they must be investing more money into their students. How much more? By multiplying that last year's percentage by the GDP per capita of each country, we can find out exactly how much each country spends on each high school student every year. Each of these bubbles is one of our 23 countries. The higher they are, the greater the percentage of GDP per capita they spend on high schoolers. The further to the right we go, the more money they spend. The size of the bubbles scales with the country's GDP per capita. Right off the bat, Guatemala and Ecuador are in bad shape. They spend a paltry $235 and $295 a year on their high school students respectively. Assuming we only consider the 10 months a year a student is in school, Costa Rica spends about the same every month with a grand total of $2,903 per student per year. That makes them the leader in Latin America by far. And again, we see a massive gap. Spain and Italy sit in at around $5,000 and $6,000. Israel and the UK come in at just over $8,000. France and Germany at $10,000. Finland hangs out awkwardly without a life partner at $12,000. And here is where Ireland makes up for all of its previous failings. They spend a colossal $13,361 per high schooler per year. I had to actually double check my math here because it blew my mind that Ireland could be scraping the bottom of the charts with GDP spent on education and still blow the majority of nations out of the water on this one. But it's true. Did you know that Ireland's GDP per capita has skyrocketed since 2013? It was around $50,000 then, now it's over $80,000. I had no idea. I guess they caught the leprechauns and stole their gold. The US comes in next at about $14,000 and then we have our two leaders. Of course it's Norway and Denmark who spend enough to buy each of their high schoolers a brand new Volkswagen Jetta. Now, obviously if your bubble is bigger it's going to be easier for you to give students a bigger piece of pie. Ireland could be doing more. Maybe it will as they adjust spending to account for their recent growth. This video is supposed to be about Peru and I promise that we are getting there. Let's head back to our little Latin American bubbles. Take a look at these two. They are punching way above their weight class. Belize and Jamaica have low GDP per capita numbers of under $5,000, yet they managed to give their high schoolers about $1,200 a year. The same as Mexico, which has almost doubled the economic output. Even when your country is relatively poor, if it makes education a priority you can get good results. Peru clearly has not prioritized education from a financial perspective. A Peruvian high school student gets just $853 a year. What do you get for $853 a head? Not very much. These are Peruvian public schools. They are incredibly spartan, bare concrete, rows of uncomfortable chairs and desks battered from years of neglect, light filters in through windows. About a quarter don't have electricity at all. Only 49% have running water. Half don't have enough chalkboards and almost a quarter don't have enough desks and chairs. But hey, Peruvians are easily some of the most inventive and resourceful people I've ever seen. They can MacGyver the shit out of just about anything. You don't need fancy whiteboards and pretty walls to learn. I bet if you have some really kick ass, motivated teachers, you'd get some great results. Money is the primary reason that any of us go to work and so naturally it only makes sense for us to have a look at teacher salaries. If we lack infrastructure in Peru, can we make up for it where it really counts? Here's the minimum annual salary for a public school teacher in each of our Latin American countries. I use the high school salary rate wherever I could find it but some countries pay the same regardless of the level you teach. I chose the minimums because we know that at least people will get that. We don't know how many people will get higher salaries but we do know that everyone will get at least this number. Right away, Costa Rica is king. They pay their teachers a healthy $27,064 a year. Chile trails closely behind at about $26,000. Colombia and Mexico hover just shy of $22,000 and then we take a precipitous drop. Here's Brazil at about $14,000. Remember, their GDP per capita is only 10% more than Peru's. And hang on, who's this? What, Ecuador at $13,000? It's almost likely new. I was gonna make this video because Ecuador has just recently went and approved a massive education reform bill that puts tons of money into education. Their teachers will now earn this fat salary which their government claims is unsustainable. I guess we'll see. And here's another surprise. Guatemala, the lowest spender of all the countries we've seen so far, still manages to pay their teachers $6,360 a year. El Salvador likewise beats expectations at $5,160. Argentinian teachers recently negotiated a raise to $40,000 pesos a year which is just shy of $5,000. I feel like I didn't even need to say this. You already knew it. But here we are. Peru, $3,060. Thank goodness the country's name is so short. Otherwise there wouldn't be enough bar for it to fit. Peruvian teachers start out earning just 7.5% more than the national minimum salary. 40% of teachers work a second job to make ends meet. There's no way that this guy is getting enough money to cover all of his basic needs on a teaching salary alone. Peru needs to spend more money on public education, period. But money's only part of the problem because Peru's education system is two-fold. If you've made it this far and you're at the end of the video, thank you so much for watching. It means a lot to me. This one took a lot of work and I also just wanna give a big shout out to John Boyce. This video was entirely inspired by his style. So I gotta give credit where it's due. John I think is one of the most amazing YouTubers and one of the best storytellers. When it comes to data visualization and a great story, nobody does it better. And I really just wanted to see what it would be like to try to make something the way he does. So John, if you're out there, I'm ready for Steelers history, Dorktown, you know, if you need a hand. Okay, call me. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next week.