Tuesday, May 17, 2005

SPOTLIGHT: Adult literacy

Good skills pay off

LITERACY skills had a large impact on earnings in all participating countries. However, the extent to which economic rewards were attributable to either skill or education was mixed, and it varied from country to country.

In Bermuda and Italy, the returns to literacy skills overshadowed the impact of education. After accounting for individual skills, wage returns to education were either zero or negative. This suggests that adults with additional years of schooling who do not display a commensurate level of skill are not rewarded for their additional schooling in the labour market.

In Canada and the United States, it appeared that the labour market rewarded both the skills measured in the ALL survey and additional schooling separately.

The 2003 survey also found that the parents' level of education had a significant impact on the literacy scores of their children. This was true in all countries, and the study showed that it has significant implications for the skills distribution of youth everywhere.

In general, literacy is becoming increasingly important as more information is transmitted and shared through information and communications technologies than ever before.

The 2003 survey found that people who use computers consistently scored higher on average on the prose literacy scale than those who didn't. This "literacy gap" occurred in all seven nations.

  Print article

© 2004, 2005 Statistics Canada.