European Social Fund's lifelong learning and regional development: a case study

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the first impacts of the European Social Fund (hereafter ESF) lifelong learning interventions on the regional development. As is well known, lifelong learning is defined as the all purposeful learning activity, undertaken throughout life, on an ongoing basis, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills, and competence within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective (CEC, 2000). Beyond the benefits, lifelong learning represents an advantage for the regional economy that could be measured in terms of both estimation of direct impact on domestic demand and evaluation of impacts on the performance of the local economies. The combination of these two kinds of effects generates a positive impact on a wider scale: a higher and skilled workforce attracts more investment, contributing to improve the well-being of a local economy. The case study is the Veneto region. The applied methodologies used in the case study are both a survey and an econometric model. In the first case, the utilized method approaches the topic from a microeconomic perspective, while in the second case the approach is purely macroeconomic.