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This paper presents a historical database on educational attainment in 74 countries for the period 1870–2010, using perpetual inventory methods before 1960 and then the Cohen and Soto database. We use a measurement error framework to merge the two databases, while correcting for a systematic measurement bias in Cohen and Soto's study linked to differential mortality across educational groups. Descriptive statistics show a continuous spread of education that has accelerated in the second half of the twentieth century. We find evidence of fast convergence in years of schooling for a subsample of advanced countries during the 1870–1914 globalization period and of modest convergence since 1980. Less advanced countries have been excluded from the convergence club in both cases.