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…

Adopting the methods of multimodal conversation analysis, this study demonstrates that adult second language (L2) users with emergent literacy formulate requests as 'complex multimodal Gestalts' consisting prototypically of deictic or depictive gestures combined with gaze, situationally relevant material, and vocal or linguistic resources. The…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between reading literacy and age in an adult population aged 25 to 65 in Nordic countries using PIAAC 2012 data. More specifically, the study examined to what extent variations in the literacy proficiency of adults are explained by age and the recentness of qualifications when…

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…

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 article focuses on the contributions from the emerging positivist epistemological approach, endorsed by the economics of language and the economics of education, to study the returns to language skills, assuming that language competencies constitute key components of human capital. It presents initial results from a study on economic returns…

Judging by their literacy proficiency scores, Nordic countries stand out from others. Their consistently high scores are intriguing and make their populations interesting benchmarks for other countries that participated in the International Adult Literacy Survey. This article addresses the question of whether there are any specific…

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…