This Data Point summarizes trends in adult literacy and numeracy skills since the 1990s for the United States and for those countries that participated with the United States in all three international adult literacy studies over the past three decades: Canada, Hungary, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Results in this Data Point…

The demand for adult training opportunities is substantial as labor markets often require adult workers to obtain advanced skills. Opportunities to obtain advanced skills are often pursued by high-income and high-skilled workers whereas low-skilled or low-income adult workers are less likely to participate. For this study, we used data from the…

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…

We assess the relationship between general literacy skills and health status by analysing data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of about 250,000 adults aged 16-65 years conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2011-15 in 33…

Participation in adult education and training (AET) programs is increasingly important for people of all ages and is necessary to remain competitive in a world experiencing rapid technological advances. Lifelong learning activities are especially important for middle-aged and older adults who intend to work at older ages to ensure they have the…

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…

It is well-known that there are large disparities in academic achievement between children of different socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. This study examines the evolution of disparities in literacy skills between adults of different SES backgrounds. It compares countries' patterns in the evolution of disparities in literacy by SES…

This study uses the PIAAC data to examine the relationships between education system characteristics (e.g. early tracking and vocational education orientation) and distributions of adult numeracy skills. It also investigates the effects of postponing the tracking age and easing university access for students on a vocational track on the average…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

This report investigates the prediction of labor force status using observed variables, such as gender, age, and immigrant status, and more importantly, measured skill variables, including literacy proficiency and a categorical rating of educational attainment based on the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the 2003 Adult Literacy…

This article examines cross-country variations in adult skills inequality and asks why skills in Anglophone countries are so unequal. Drawing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's recent Survey of Adult Skills and other surveys, it investigates the differences across countries and country groups in inequality in both…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the link between age and proficiency in information-processing skills, based on information drawn from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The data reveal significant age-related differences in proficiencies, strongly suggesting that proficiency tends to "naturally" decline with age. Age…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

This publication reviews and summarizes the findings of the major benchmark studies and reports in adult literacy--beginning with the University of Texas' Adult Performance Level Study of 1977 and continuing through the 2006 NAAL survey results, A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults in the 21st Century.

Distinguishes social capital from societal cohesion. Argues that education acts in different ways for each. Develops a distributional model showing the relationship between equality of educational outcomes and various measures of social cohesion. Discusses theories explaining country trends and variations in educational inequality and social…