whce.world
World Human Capital Expenditure Database
Thammasat University, opened in 1934, was the first public university in Thailand. Photo: National Archives of Thailand. (1934).
The World Human Capital Expenditure (WHCE) Project is a research initiative to document, harmonise, and analyse long-run public and private spending on human capital. It compiles data from budget archives, statistical yearbooks, and historical records to build consistent cross-country time series from the 19th century to the present. The project facilitates comparative research on investment in human capital and its implication on inequality of opportunity and global productivity convergence. This is the first database of its kind to cover all world regions over the period from 1800 to 2025.