"SKY-high copper prices; rock-bottom education!" read a student banner during a three-week sit-in by Chile's secondary-school pupils in May.
India ranks near the bottom in education, health and economic participation but ranks high in women's political empowerment.
Are the misfortunes Latin America is facing - staggering inequality, heightened violence, corruption, breaches of human rights, bottom-ranked education systems, crippling natural disasters- traumatic, or can they be seen as opportunities to learn and grow?
They told the writer the bottom line was education.
A big reason, particularly in the bottom half, is education, or rather the lack of it.
At the bottom of the education heap, too, men are less likely to have wives who earn a lot.
A movement began in the 1980's, led in part by Ross Perot, when Texas ranked at the bottom nationally in education, and has evolved since.
Among those who first married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5% were.At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed.
Almost two-thirds of Washington's ten-year-olds cannot read with any degree of understanding, and the district sits near the bottom of national education rankings.
Data from the National Center for Health Statistics, which was used by the researchers, show the death rates for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists were about 2.5 times higher for people at the bottom of the education spectrum in 1995.
