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Source: National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL)
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Berryman, Sue E. |
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The Role of Literacy in the Wealth of Individuals and Nations Technical Report TR94-13, National Center on Adult Literacy, University of Pennsylvania, September 1994. Also: http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/abepds/the_role_of_literacy_in_the_wealth_of_individuals_and_nations_tr94-13_sept_1994.pdf Cohort(s): Young Men Publisher: National Center on Adult Literacy Keyword(s): Earnings; Economic Changes/Recession; Education; Education, Adult; Employment; Training; Training, Employee; Training, Occupational; Training, Off-the-Job; Training, On-the-Job; Wage Determination; Wage Levels; Wages; Wages, Adult Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Berryman's study of the impact of "foundational skills" on wealth and employer-sponsored training cites NLS Young Men data showing that from 1967 to 1980 only 45% of those who failed to complete high school, but 71% of high school completers and 79% of college graduates, received training in company-sponsored programs. The abstract of her paper is as follows: Adults' foundation skills, usually acquired in school, affect the wealth of individuals and nations, not just directly, but also indirectly through the often invisible and poorly measured human-capital-producing mechanism of employer-sponsored training. Employers train the trainable, building on the skills that their better educated employees bring to the labor market from school. Thus, employer-sponsored training depends on and is complementary to, not a substitute for, good foundation skills. Independent of employees' initial education, employer-sponsored training increases employees' productivity and thus their earnings more than training in post-secondary institutions; it decreases the incidence of quits, and, since most real wage gains result from being paid for being more productive, not from switching jobs, its effects on quits enhances wage growth; it decreases layoffs; and it decreases the duration of unemployment spells when they occur. Determining whether employers or economic sectors in a nation underinvest or overinvest in training depends on estimates of the rates of return to training, but in the United States, training costs are so poorly measured as to yield a range of estimated returns too wide to form a basis for policy advice. |
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Bibliography Citation
Berryman, Sue E. "The Role of Literacy in the Wealth of Individuals and Nations." Technical Report TR94-13, National Center on Adult Literacy, University of Pennsylvania, September 1994. |