Secondary Education Systems and the General Skills of Less- and Intermediate-educated Adults (original) (raw)
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European Journal of Education
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We conclude that educational inequality over several decades has underpinned England's persistent skills inequality, and that the impact of social background may be leading to high levels of skills inequality both through processes external to the education system and through those which are internal to it. We also investigate and find no support for three possible additional explanations for England's high skills inequality: Inter-age group skills differences: these are low in England. Skills differences deriving from migration flows: the effects are small in England. Especially unequal adult learning: the inequality of adult learning is broadly middling in England; moreover, there is no observed tendency for countries with high inequality of adult learning to have especially unequal literacy and numeracy in their older cohorts.
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Less-educated adults bear the highest risk of labor market marginalization in all advanced economies, but the extent of their disadvantage differs considerably across countries. Exploiting unique data on the actual skills of adults from PIAAC 2011/12, we examine two prominent explanations for this cross-country variation. Human capital theory suggests that the marginalization of less-educated individuals reflects a lack of skills. The signaling explanation emphasizes the role of educational credentials as easy-to-observe proxies for skills and productivity. It suggests that the skills distribution of educational groups can affect their labor market position beyond any individual-level effect of skills by influencing the signaling value or “skills transparency” of educational credentials. Applying a two-step regression approach to a sample of 48,033 adults in 21 countries, we find support for both explanations. Consistent with human capital theory, literacy and numeracy skills are po...
Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a theoretical perspective, there are many reasons why this relationship is not perfect, and to some degree this is due to third variables. Thus, we want to explore the net relationship between educational attainment (harmonized according to the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED) and literacy skills, and how much skills vary within education levels across countries.
Education Economics, 2020
According to a prominent hypothesis, the occurrence of educational mismatches is consistent with human capital theory since over-and undereducation are substitutes for heterogeneity in the abilities and skills among educational peers. Using German data 1 of literacy and numeracy test scores, I find evidence that compared to their correctly matched educational peers, overeducated (undereducated) workers have lower (better) numeracy and literacy. Controlling for former periods of educational mismatch or unemployment confirms these results. However, only a small proportion of the wage penalty (wage premium) associated with overeducation (undereducation) can be attributed to the wider consideration of human capital endowment.
Schooling, Literacy, Numeracy and Labour Market Success
Economic Record, 2003
Schooling, Literacy, Numeracy and Labor Market Success * This paper uses data from the 1996 Australian Survey of Aspects of Literacy to examine the effects on labour market outcomes of literacy, numeracy and educational attainment. The survey includes a range of literacy and numeracy variables that are highly inter-correlated. A "general to specific" approach identifies the most relevant literacy and numeracy variables. Including the others adds little explanatory power. Among males and females separately about half of the total effect of education on labour force participation and on unemployment can be attributed to literacy and numeracy (the indirect effect) and about half to the direct effect of education. There is apparently no indirect effect of labour market experience through literacy and numeracy on participation or unemployment. The direct and total effects of experience are the same. The findings suggest that education is a value added process in which skills, including literacy and numeracy, are improved and that these skills enhance labour market outcomes.
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This article explores cross-country patterns in how conditions relating to family background, education, and the labor market are related to literacy and numeracy skills. It seeks to assess whether these patterns are in agreement with models of skills formation as identified in the political economy literature. The novelty of this article resides in a reexamination of the findings in the literature of skills formation and education and training system with new data on adults’ skills. This research uses a two-step approach: first it applies Shapley decomposition variance on adult skills and then each country scores are clustered to search for common pattern and regularities in skills formation. This leads us to single out common regularities among groups of countries in the way skills are structured and distributed. We find three main typologies and different subgroups within them that are compatible with the literature on skills formation models.
Cross-Country Variation in Adult Skills Inequality
Comparative Education Review, 2015
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