The UN calculates a population's human capital based on its average years of schooling, the wage its workers can command and the number of years they can expect to work before they retire (or die).

ECONOMIST: A new report comes up with a better way to size up wealth

According to recent studies, indigenous Mexicans have an average of 4.6 schooling years compared to a mean of 7.9 years among non-indigenous people.

UNESCO: Bilingual Literacy for Life

Today the average Latin American adult has only five years of schooling, compared with nine years for his East-Asian counterpart.

ECONOMIST: Latin America

But the average Guatemalan has just 4.1 years of schooling.

ECONOMIST: Central America

And those years of schooling are not full years: local education officials report that in urban areas in the south an average teacher spends only 110 of the notional 200 days of the academic year actually in the classroom.

ECONOMIST: A tale of two Mexicos