World poverty could be cut in half if all adults completed high school.

According to new analysis on education’s impact on poverty by Unesco’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report‚ nearly 60-million people could escape poverty if all adults had just two more years of schooling.

“If all adults completed secondary education‚ 420 million [people] could be lifted out of poverty‚ reducing the total number of poor people by more than half globally and by almost two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia‚” said report spokesman Kate Redman.

She said studies showed that education has direct and indirect impacts on economic growth and poverty.

“Education provides skills that boost employment opportunities and incomes‚ while helping to protect people from socio-economic vulnerabilities. A more equitable expansion of education is likely to reduce inequality‚ lifting the poorest from the bottom of the ladder‚” Redman said.

However‚ education’s potential to eradicate poverty will have no impact if the high school dropout rates continue to climb.

“The new Unesco Institute for Statistics data show that there has been virtually no progress in reducing out-of-school rates in recent years‚” Redman said.

Globally‚ 9% of all children of primary school age are still denied their right to education‚ with rates reaching 16% and 37% for youth of lower and upper secondary ages‚ respectively.

“In total‚ 264 million children‚ adolescents and youth were out of school in 2015‚” Redman said.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest out-of-school rates for all age groups.

“More than half of all youth between the ages of 15 and 17 are not in school‚ as are more than one-third of adolescents between 12 and 14 years and one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11‚” Redman said.

The report called on countries to improve the quality of education and stressed the need to reduce the costs of education for families.