Economic returns to education and training for adult with low numeracy skills

• Summary
• Purpose
• Approach
• Research questions
• Methodology
• Organisations

Summary

Purpose

This study will examine the economic returns to training for adults with low numeracy skills.

Approach

Literature review and analysis of longitudinal data from existing data sets

Research questions

Two primary empirical questions will be considered:

1. How is the likelihood of receiving training affected by numeracy level after controlling for other factors?

2. How do returns to training (e.g., wages and wage growth) respond to the level of training, e.g., are there scale effects that differentiate numeracy level?

Methodology

This study will use the Australian Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (LSAY) and the United States NLSY79 data sets to measure wages and wage growth for low numeracy adults, based on hours of training received for on-the-job and off-the-job training models. The two cohorts selected in the LSAY are persons born in 1961 and 1965.

Organisations

Lynne Gleeson has recently returned to Ballarat following the completion of her PhD (Public Policy and Administration) in December 2002, from Virginia, USA. Her PhD dissertation was titled "An Analysis of the Economic Returns to Training for Low Literacy Adults". Lynne has recently been awarded an Early Career Researcher Grant from within the University of Ballarat to continue with this research, and is looking at the economic returns to training for low literacy adults within Australia. This project is an extension of previous work completed in the US, and is expanding it to include the impact of low numeracy skills for adults.