The OECD Survey of Adult Skills is the jewel in the crown of its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This paper argues that the findings and policy lessons from the project to date justify the high hopes which were placed in PIAAC when detailed planning for the project began in 2003. First, it presents a brief…

Younger workers, particularly those entering the workforce at ages 25-34 years, are more educated than ever before. The potential for these workers to be over-educated in their jobs might therefore be high. But does it follow that they are mismatched to the skill requirements of their jobs? This study examines the link between over-education and…

Literacy for Life is the second report from the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. It presents additional results on the nature and magnitude of the literacy gaps faced by OECD countries and how these gaps have evolved over the medium term. It offers new insights into the factors that influence the formation of adult skills in various…

The research presented in this report offers new insights about the relationship between changes in adult literacy and changes in employment and earnings. This paper will first describe the design and methodology of the Longitudinal Study of Adult Literacy (LSAL) and then present the key findings from LSAL about individuals' literacy growth over…

Labor market outcomes of 25- to 64-year-olds were examined as a function of sex, prose proficiency level, and highest educational level attained. The data for 1992 confirmed that educational attainment and literacy level are both positively associated with higher annual earnings and lower unemployment rates and that literacy is positively…

With a national goal announced as "ending welfare as we know it," it is necessary to discuss questions regarding targeting, sanctions and incentives, service delivery, and success criteria for adult literacy programs that attempt to train low-literate adults for jobs. At present, there are about 14-15 million recipients of Aid to Families with…

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)…

A literature review examined the relationship of adults' verbal and mathematical literacy to employers' investments in training, employee wages, unemployment probabilities, unemployment duration, technological change, productivity, and economic growth. Most of the publications analyzed dealt with the United States. The analysis revealed that…

The scope and effects of employer-sponsored training in the United States were examined to determine the following: how economic and technological change interact with employers' responses to the new environment's demands; how employer-sponsored training affects the functional distribution of educational attainment, productivity, and earnings; and…

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…

This review of research is part of a larger project which identified exemplary community college programs that employ innovative curriculum and instructional practices in order to help low-skilled adults attain a family sustainable wage. The project goal was to identify best practices that are replicable at other community colleges. These programs…

The linkages between disability and health status and the returns to education and basic skills training were examined through an analysis of data from wave 3 of the 1993 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The data sets were used to estimate standard wage equations with…

Technology provides a new and effective tool for accelerating economic growth, and developing countries are embracing technology and education as the means toward attaining economic parity with the United States and other developed nations. Evidence suggests that this strategy is paying off. Developing countries are building a technology…

Data drawn from 3 cycles of data collection for the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) were analyzed to identify the levels and distributions of literacy skills in the adult populations of 20 countries. The following were among the main conclusions: (1) in 14 of the countries, at least 15% of all adults have literacy skills at only the…

The Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL) is a large-scale co-operative effort undertaken by governments, national statistics agencies, research institutions and multi-lateral agencies. The development and management of the study were co-ordinated by Statistics Canada and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in collaboration with the…