Average Years of Schooling (long-run)_

Event_Log

1. 011962Literacy Corps foundedAssociation

   Government decrees of 26 October and 3 December 1962 establish the Sepah-e Danesh (Literacy Corps), conscripting educated young men into military-alternative service teaching literacy in villages; parliament approves the program on 26 January 1963 as part of the White Revolution.

   Why this link: Average years of schooling nearly tripled from 0.99 (1960) to 2.87 (1975), the fastest 15-year acceleration in this long-run series, coinciding with the Literacy Corps' village-level teaching program (educated young men performed rural literacy teaching in lieu of military service) and the broader White Revolution-era rural investment push.

   Caveat: This is a smoothed, interpolated long-run series (OWID's own methodology blends censuses and modeled trends across sparse historical observation points for this era), so the acceleration reflects the dataset's construction as much as any single verified annual figure; the same window also includes broad oil-boom-era income growth and urbanization that independently raise school attendance, so the Literacy Corps program specifically cannot be isolated as the sole driver.

   Lag: gradual, 1962-1975Source: Encyclopaedia Iranica (Literacy Corps)