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Population Census
5 Education
Growing trend toward higher education
- Of the population aged 15 and over (108,224,783 persons), 99,220,720 (91.7 percent of the population aged 15 and over) are graduates of an educational institution. A breakdown by category of last school graduated from shows that persons completing the secondary education (graduates from "high schools or former middle schools") were the largest in number at 45,024,501 (41.6 percent), followed by those completing the higher education (graduates from "colleges, technical colleges, universities and graduate schools") at 26,574,891 (24.6 percent), and those completing the primary education (persons completing elementary and middle schools) at 23,807,854 (22.0 percent). In comparison with ten years previously in 1990, a 16.8 percent decline may be observed in the number of persons completing only the primary education, while those completing higher education increased by 38.6 percent, indicating a growing trend toward the higher education.
- A breakdown by prefecture of the ratio of persons completing the higher education shows that Tokyo-to had the highest ratio (35.3 percent), and Aomori-ken the lowest (13.9 percent). High ratios were found in and around Tokyo-to and Osaka-fu.
Table 7. Population 15 Years of Age and Over, by Type of Last School Completed and Sex - Japan (1980 - 2000)