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…

This report shares data in the following categories as they relate to graduates in Ontario's economy: (1) Matching skills to employer needs: pathways, entrepreneurship, and innovation; (2) Ontario's college graduate advantage compared to the U.S.; (3) Ontario's post-secondary graduates in the world economy; (4) Educational attainment and…

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…

Mixed findings characterize the literature on skills and economic distributions within and across countries. The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) offers new, internationally comparable data on literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills that can be combined with wage information. This paper…

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 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 training requirements of foreign-born workers may be different from those of native-born workers in similar jobs. Over recent decades Australian immigration policy has focused predominantly on accepting high-skilled migrants. Although this focus has resulted in the successful integration of foreign-born workers into the Australian labour…

This report comes from a three-year program of research, "Securing Their Future: Older Workers and the Role of VET." Previous work from the program looked at how well workers were matched to their jobs, based on their literacy and numeracy skills and the use of these skills in the workplace. In a continuation of that work, the research…

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…

The National Commission on Adult Literacy proposes creating a new Adult Education and Workforce Skills System with the capacity to effectively serve 20 million adults annually by the year 2020. The primary mission of this new System will be to move out-of-school adults to readiness for postsecondary education and job training and enable their…

America's workforce is facing an education and skills crisis. Among the 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States is the only one in which younger adults are less educated than the previous generation. "Unless we invest now to educate and train our workforce, America risks its economic…

Purpose: The purpose of this document is to provide an annotated bibliography on best practices for late entry learners into college academic upgrading programs. It is intended for practitioners, administrators, and researchers and others with an interest in this field. Method: This annotated bibliography synthesizes sources related to late entry…

Little is known about educational programs referred to as "career pathway programs" that attempt to integrate adult literacy, adult basic education (ABE), General Equivalency Diploma (GED) instruction, English language literacy (ELL), and pre-collegiate developmental education with postsecondary career and technical education (CTE)…

The question of whether inequality in skills explains inequality of earnings across advanced countries was examined through a review of data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), which examined the prose, document, and quantitative literacy skills of adults in 12 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and…