Literacy Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills and Earnings: An Economist’s Perspective

Widening the Net: Considerations in Interpreting “Literacy Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills and Earnings: An Economist’s Perspective”

Literacy and Earnings: An Investigation of the Interaction of Cognitive and Unobserved Skills in Earnings Generation*

This paper uses direct measures of literacy to examine the influence of cognitive and unobserved skills on earnings. We find that cognitive skills contribute significantly to earnings and that their inclusion in earnings equations reduces the measured impact of schooling. The impact of literacy on earnings does not vary across quantiles of the earnings distribution; schooling and literacy do no...

Do Literacy and Numeracy Pay Off? On the Relationship between Basic Skills and Earnings

Do Literacy and Numeracy Pay Off? On the Relationship between Basic Skills and Earnings Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as administrati...

Labour Market Institutions and Outcomes: A Cross-National Study

Most research on the contribution of human capital to economic growth and its role in the distribution of income uses indirect measures of human capital such as educational attainment and work experience. Such measures are arguably inputs into the production of human capital in the form of skills, competencies and knowledge. This study uses Canadian data from the International Adult Literacy Su...

Quality-Consistent Estimates of International Schooling and Skill Gradients

Mincer wage equations focus on the earnings premium associated with additional schooling for a cross section of individuals of different ages but generally fail to account for changes in education quality over time. More fundamentally, school attainment is an inadequate proxy of individual skills, when both family inputs and ability affect cognitive skills. We combine quality-adjusted measures ...