Abstract
Can participation in job-related training contribute to the formation and maintenance of adults’ literacy skills? Although evidence suggests that participation in training is related to higher literacy skills, it remains unclear whether this association reflects a causal effect of training participation on literacy (training effects), results from the self-selection of more high-skilled individuals into training (selection effects), or is due to other sources of endogeneity (e.g., omitted variable bias). To unravel these possibilities, we used data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and its German follow-up, PIAAC-Longitudinal (PIAAC-L). As these unique data offer repeated measures of literacy skills, spaced three years apart, in a large and representative sample, they allowed us to disentangle training effects from selection effects and to account for potential endogeneity. Analyses revealed that, even after taking account of formal education and a host of job characteristics, individuals with higher literacy skills were more likely to participate in training. By contrast, no evidence for effects of training on literacy skills emerged in any of our models, which comprised lagged-dependent, fixed effects, and instrumental-variable models. These findings suggest that, rather than job-related training contributing to literacy development, individuals with higher literacy skills are more likely to participate in training.
Highlights
As the old adage goes, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Or can you? This question is central to research on lifelong learning in the workplace
Job characteristics include full-time employment, tenure, tenure squared, firm size, a dummy variable indicating a large amount of complex problem solving at work, a dummy variable indicating the use of computers at work, four occupational dummies, 21 industry dummies, and a dummy variable indicating whether respondents lived in eastern Germany
The key contribution of our study is to answer the question as to whether the frequently observed (e.g., [8, 10, 11]) positive association between participation in job-related training and literacy skills reflects causation or selection, or whether it is due to other sources of endogeneity, such as omitted variable bias
Summary
As the old adage goes, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”. This question is central to research on lifelong learning in the workplace. Researchers ask what occupational factors contribute to the formation or maintenance of worker’s individual skills after finishing formal education [1,2,3]. In the light of the growing pace of technological innovation and the demographic challenge of an ageing workforce, this question is relevant both for individuals themselves (e.g., for maintaining employment prospects) and for society at large (e.g., in terms of economic growth) [4, 5]. Workplace-based learning—in particular participation in job-related training—is one of the key conduits for the development of adults’ skills [6, 7].
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