Adult education, training and individual performance: Some preliminary evidence from PIAAC

Despite a growing emphasis on the importance of lifelong learning and continuous skills updating the existing analyses typically measure the return to adult education and training as gains in wage and overlook individual performance. The proposed paper investigates how adult education and training impact individual proficiency in cognitive skills based on the Survey of Adult Skills promoted by OECD. Results from eleven EU countries show that adult education has either negative or non-significant impact on cognitive skills, whereas training displays significant and positive effects. However, the overall outcomes result from the composition of differentiated country-level effects. In addition, the impact of training gets smaller and less significant when restricting the analysis to employed individuals.