The basic cognitive skill of numeracy is a recognized form of human capital, associated with economic and social well being for individuals and for nations. In this study, we explore how occupational complexity relates to proficiency in numeracy, among adults in full-time employment. We operationalize occupational complexity by constructing three…

This technical report presents the results of a cross-case analysis of the eleven case studies conducted under the Higher Education for Smart Specialisation project during the period 2016-2020. The analysis identifies key themes and innovative practice examples from across case studies, developing a structured typology of innovative practices for…

Empirical evidence suggests that educational attainment nurtures people's social outcomes and promotes active participation in society and stability. However, it is unclear to what extent other types of human capital also correlate with social outcomes. Hence, we explored the opportunity offered by the PIAAC survey through its provision of…

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 article uses data from a major international survey to construct earnings functions in terms of learning outcomes and variables related to working life in different European countries. In order to complement the extended earnings regression model, the authors have used partial correlation analysis and the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to…

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…

The text for this article derives from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, which contain the central elements of his extensive critique of education in Benito Mussolini's Italy. In prison from 1926 to 1937, he produced a remarkable amount of writing on many political and cultural subjects, all of which were scribbled out in student notebooks and…