Degrees of competency: the relationship between educational qualifications and adult skills across countries

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 theoretical perspective, there are many reasons why this relationship is not perfect, and to some degree this is due to third variables. Thus, we want to explore the net relationship between educational attainment (harmonized according to the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED) and literacy skills, and how much skills vary within education levels across countries. Methods: We use data from 21 countries from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012. This paper compares the literacy skills of adults who achieved different levels of educational attainment across countries. Given the high degree of educational differentiation in most countries, we do this using a more differentiated educational attainment variable than what is commonly used. In our analyses we firstly adjust for factors that are likely to affect access to education and the acquisition of educational qualifications and literacy skills, such as parental education and language and migration background. In a second step, we also take into account factors affecting skill development after initial formal education, such as occupation and skill use at home. Results: We firstly find a high degree of heterogeneity of skills across countries for equivalent education categories. Secondly, we find skill similarities for equivalent education categories classified at different broad education levels, sometimes even breaking the hierarchical order of 'higher education entails higher competencies'. Conclusion: We conclude that ISCED levels cannot be taken as a cross-nationally comparable proxy for human capital in terms of literacy skills, and that education has to be harmonized in a substantively more meaningful way in future adult literacy surveys

Investment in human capital: Formal education, training and skills – analyses with PIAAC

Abstract 1: 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 theoretical perspective, there are many reasons why this relationship is not perfect, and to some degree this is due to third variables. Thus, we want to explore the net relationship between educational attainment (harmonized according to the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED) and literacy skills, and how much skills vary within education levels across countries. We use data from 21 countries from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012. This paper compares the literacy skills of adults who achieved different levels of educational attainment across countries. Given the high degree of educational differentiation in most countries, we do this using a more differentiated educational attainment variable than what is commonly used. In our analyses we firstly adjust for factors that are likely to affect access to education and the acquisition of educational qualifications and literacy skills, such as parental education and language and migration background. In a second step, we also take into account factors affecting skill development after initial formal education, such as occupation and skill use at home. We firstly find a high degree of heterogeneity of skills across countries for equivalent education categories. Secondly, we find skill similarities for equivalent education categories classified at different broad education levels, sometimes even breaking the hierarchical order of ‘higher education entails higher competencies’. We conclude that ISCED levels cannot be taken as a cross-nationally comparable proxy for human capital in terms of literacy skills, and that education has to be harmonized in a substantively more meaningful way in future adult literacy surveys. Abstract 2: Lifelong learning is becoming increasingly important in today’s societies. Individuals need to develop their skills through training in order to be successfully integrated in the labor market. We use data from the Programme for the International Assessment for Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to investigate gender differences in training across twelve countries. We analyze participation and perceived barriers to training for women in comparison to men and control for family structure and employment. As institutional framework, we use four different welfare state regimes to show how policies can affect the decision to participate. Our results show that different welfare regimes have an impact on the extent adults take part in training and on perceived barriers. In all countries except the Nordic states, men are more likely to participate in training. However, this inequality disappears once controlling for further individual characteristics. Our research provides insights why adults are deterred from engaging in training. Abstract 3: Migrants in OECD countries have lower chances on the labor market, lower educational attainment, their qualifications from other countries are often not recognized in the host country, or their skills sometimes do not match with the local labor demands. Non-formal education or ‘lifelong learning’ is a possible way to mitigate these problems and address existing inequities. This paper thus analyzes the following key questions: Does training participation vary between migrants and natives? Is it possible to distinguish any patterns across countries? Do the same kind of barriers prevent migrants in comparison to natives from participation in training? Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), I confirm previous findings that migrants participate less in training than natives. These disadvantages, however, tend to disappear in the second generation. I also show that formal educational attainment cannot explain lower training participation of the first generation. A possible explanation is that, compared to those who completed their formal education in the host country, migrants who obtained a comparable degree abroad exhibit lower levels of literacy, which is an important driver of access to training. First generation migrants also more often tend to report financial reasons as barrier to obtaining training. All these findings are relatively robust across different countries and welfare regimes

How Standardized is Occupational Coding? A Comparison of Results from Different Coding Agencies in Germany

As occupational data play a crucial part in many social and economic analyses, information on the reliability of these data and, in particular on the role of coding agencies, is important. Based on our review of previous research, we develop four hypotheses, which we test using occupation-coded data from the German General Social Survey and the field test data from the German Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. Because the same data were coded by several agencies, their coding results could be directly compared. As the surveys used different instruments, and interviewer training differed, the effects of these factors could also be evaluated. Our main findings are: the percentage of uncodeable responses is low (1.8–4.9%) but what is classified as “uncodeable” varies between coding agencies. Inter-agency coding reliability is relatively low κ ca. 0.5 at four-digit level, and codings sometimes differ systematically between agencies. The reliability of derived status scores is satisfactory (0.82–0.90). The previously reported negative relationship between answer length and coding reliability could be replicated and effects of interviewer training demonstrated. Finally, we discuss the importance of establishing common coding rules and present recommendations to overcome some of the problems in occupation coding

Grundlegende Kompetenzen Erwachsener mit Migrationshintergrund im internationalen Vergleich: PIAAC 2012

Der Migrationsbericht zum Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) kontrastiert die Grundkompetenzen der erwachsenen Bevölkerung mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund in Deutschland und im internationalen Vergleich. In Deutschland, wie auch in den meisten anderen Ländern verfügen Personen mit Migrationshintergrund im Durchschnitt über geringere Grundkompetenzen als Personen ohne Migrationshintergrund. Diese Kompetenzdisparitäten sind insbesondere durch Unterschiede in strukturellen Hintergrundmerkmalen, wie zum Beispiel dem Bildungshintergrund oder dem sozioökonomischen Status, zu erklären

PIAAC 2012: Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse im Überblick

Die Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD) untersucht mit dem Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Com-petencies (PIAAC) zentrale Grundkompetenzen in der erwachsenen Bevölkerung – wie die Lesekompetenz, die alltagsmathematische Kompetenz und technologiebasiertes Problemlösen –, von denen angenommen wird, dass sie für die erfolgreiche Teilhabe an der heutigen Gesellschaft von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Sie sind ein wichtiger Grundstein für die Entwicklung zahlreicher weiterer spezifischer Kompetenzen und Fertigkeiten. Mittels PIAAC sollen diese Schlüsselkompetenzen im Erwachsenenalter international verglichen werden. Der Fokus liegt hierbei auf der Bevölkerung im erwerbsfähigen Alter (16 bis 65 Jahre). Ergänzend hierzu werden in einigen Ländern, so auch in Deutschland, die Kompetenzen im höheren Alter untersucht, was insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der Verschiebung des Renteneintrittsalters in Deutschland wichtige Informationen über den Kompetenzerhalt liefer