Education, adult learning and skills Utdanning, voksnes læring og ferdigheter

We have investigated the relationship between completed years of education and skills in adulthood, and job opportunities for youth aged 16-18 using international PIAAC-data and unemployment data from OECD. The results are published in Haraldsvik and Strøm (2020). We show that years of education and cognitive skills in adulthood are higher for cohorts experiencing high unemployment in their country during their teenage years. This countercyclical pattern in skills and educational attainment is consistent with the hypothesis that increased opportunity cost of education reduces the individual incentives to invest in education. In Bensnes and Strøm (2019) we have investigated the relationship between human capital acquisition in Norway and youth job opportunities in the retail industry. Jobs in retail firms are one of the most important unskilled job alternatives for youth. Our research design exploits variation in retail job opportunities across Norwegian municipalities induced by the change in opening hours legislation in the retail sector in 1985. We find that increased opening hours in retail decreased the probability to complete upper secondary education and reduced educational attainment measured by completed years of education in the longer run. We also find a reduction of income as adult, but the income effect is small, probably due to limited variation in wage levels across workers in the centralized collective bargaining system in Norway. In Iversen and Strøm (2020) we use data from 21 countries from the international PIAAC survey to investigate the relationship between employment probability and skills and how this relationship varies with labor market institutions. We find some support in the data for the hypothesis that the employment-skill gradient is higher in countries with high union density and coverage, centralized wage bargaining and a large public sector. Of special interest is the finding that the employment-skill relationship is particularly strong for persons with weak health and low formal education, usually considered as vulnerable groups in the labor market. In Falch, Sandsør and Strøm (2017), we analyze the relationship between long run outcomes in terms of completed years of education and income as adult and class size in lower secondary school in Norway and we ask to what extent this relationship depends on organizational issues and fiscal conditions at the local level. The results show that the effect of class-size is close to zero and never statistically significant. Further, we find that the zero effect does not depend on the local supply of qualified teachers, municipality size, or whether the municipality have access to funds in terms of property taxes or not. The estimated zero effect does not depend on whether compulsory school is completed in counties with free school choice in upper secondary (high school) or not. In Sandsør, Falch and Strøm (2020) we investigate the effect of municipality mergers on long-run student outcomes, measured by educational attainment and labor market outcomes in adulthood. Our research design is to compare outcomes for student cohorts in compulsory schooling before and after municipality merger with the difference for similar cohorts of students in comparable municipalities that did not merge. We find that cohorts of students exposed to compulsory schooling after a municipality merger took place increased income in adulthood by about 4% and educational attainment by about 0.1 years relatively to the control group of cohorts not exposed to a merger. Lars-Erik Borge and our Danish project partner Nicolai Kristensen (VIVE- The Danish Centre for Social Science Research, formerly KORA) has investigated the relationship between employment, skills and wages based on data from Danish longitudinal register data matched with data from PIAAC. The findings in Borge and Kristensen (2019) show that across the entire wage distribution, the cost of being a poor reader has increased dramatically since the 1980's. Another finding is that poor readers have lower labor market participation rates and earlier retirement. The organization and arrangement of two international workshops, in 2016 and 2017, have been an important part of the project. These workshops have been very important arenas for the interaction between the members of the project team and leading international scholars within the fields of education and labor market research. This interaction has substantially improved the research skills of the members of the project team and contributed to the development of new research ideas and methodological approaches.

Prosjektet har gitt en rekke artikler i internasjonale tidsskrifter med fagfellevurdering, foredrag på mange internasjonale og nasjonale forskerkonferanser, masteroppgaver og organisering av internasjonale workshops. De empiriske resultatene som prosjektet har frambrakt representerer nyttig informasjon for beslutningstakere på nasjonalt og lokalt plan som utformer politikk på utdannings- og arbeidslivsområdet. Interaksjonen med det internasjonale fagmiljøet via internasjonal publisering, deltakelse på forskerkonferanser og arrangering av egne workshops med internasjonal deltakelse har styrket kvaliteten på forskningen hos medlemmene i prosjektgruppen og bidratt til utvikling av nye forskningsideer og metodiske tilnærminger. I tillegg til betydningen for prosjektgruppen har denne interaksjonen bidratt til internasjonalisering og kvalitetsheving av det samlede forskningsmiljøet innenfor utdannings og arbeidsmarkedsområdet i Norge.

We propose a research project emphasizing the change in adult skills over the life cycle and the role of educational institutions, labor market conditions and demographic changes using data from PIAAC combined with data from administrative registers. The project consists of 3 parts. Part 1 aims to investigate how adult skills as measured in PIAAC vary by age and across cohorts and between countries. By using an explicit international comparative perspective and combining PIAAC data with data from ALL/IALS 1994-2003, this can provide some broad explanations for the apparent divergence between Norway's mediocre position in student performance studies and high ranking on the previous studies of adult skills. In Part 2 the research question is the linkage be tween adult skills and the organization of the formal education system. An important issue is the possible tradeoff between general or vocational upper secondary education. The project aims to explore international data on adult skills and labor market ou tcomes in PIAAC combined with register data and land-specific reforms in the content of upper secondary education to inform on the trade-off between general and specific/vocational education. In Part 3, the research question is to what extent demographic and labor market conditions at the time youth make their educational investments affect adult skills and labor market performance. We will quantify these relationships using PIAAC data and country and regional data on cohort sizes and labor market condit ions (unemployment) combined with register data.