IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sofiwp/2009_001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Upgrading the Low Skilled: Is Public Provision of Formal Education a Sensible Policy?

Author

Listed:
  • Stenberg, Anders

    (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University)

Abstract

At various political levels, including the OECD and the EU, it is repeatedly emphasized that upgrading the low skilled is an important area for the economic and social development of modern societies. Employers are typically reluctant to train low skilled, who in their turn are unwilling to participate due to financial constraints or a perception of low quality and/or returns to training. If this is a market imperfection, a possible remedy is suggested by public provision of formal education where enrollees are eligible for financial support. However, the costs may be large and the economic returns to formal adult education (AE) for low skilled, a crucial measure to assess if expenses should be increased or decreased, is a virtually unexplored issue. This study uses Swedish register data 1990-2004 of low skilled siblings aged 24-43 in 1994 to estimate difference-indifference- in-differences models which include family fixed effects. It is found that a year of AE improves earnings by 4.4 per cent, but calculations indicate that the private returns alone only roughly cover the costs incurred by society, implying that social returns to AE are needed to justify the expenses.

Suggested Citation

  • Stenberg, Anders, 2009. "Upgrading the Low Skilled: Is Public Provision of Formal Education a Sensible Policy?," Working Paper Series 1/2009, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2009_001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sofi.su.se/content/1/c6/03/09/74/WP09no1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hällsten, Martin, 2012. "Is it ever too late to study? The economic returns on late tertiary degrees in Sweden," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 179-194.
    2. Grönqvist, Hans & Hall, Caroline, 2013. "Education policy and early fertility: Lessons from an expansion of upper secondary schooling," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 13-33.
    3. Åslund, Olof & Grönqvist, Hans & Hall, Caroline & Vlachos, Jonas, 2018. "Education and criminal behavior: Insights from an expansion of upper secondary school," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 178-192.
    4. Hall, Caroline, 2016. "Does more general education reduce the risk of future unemployment? Evidence from an expansion of vocational upper secondary education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 251-271.
    5. Bernhard von Rosenbladt, 2010. "Adult education and training in comparative perspective – indicators of participation and country profiles," Statistics in Transition new series, Główny Urząd Statystyczny (Polska), vol. 11(3), pages 465-502, December.
    6. Anders Stenberg & Xavier Luna & Olle Westerlund, 2012. "Can adult education delay retirement from the labour market?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 677-696, January.
    7. Stenberg, Anders, 2011. "Using longitudinal data to evaluate publicly provided formal education for low skilled," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1262-1280.
    8. Schulte-Braucks, Philipp, 2013. "Von Schweden lernen: Weiterbildung gering Qualifizierter im Rahmen der kommunalen Erwachsenenbildung (Komvux)," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Skill Formation and Labor Markets SP I 2013-502, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    9. Hall, Caroline, 2013. "Does more general education reduce the risk of future unemployment? Evidence from labor market experiences during the Great Recession," Working Paper Series, Center for Labor Studies 2013:10, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Human capital; adult education; earnings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2009_001. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Daniel Rossetti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sofsuse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.