Links Between Literacy and Numeracy Skills and Labour Market Outcomes

Anthony Shomos
Additional contact information
Anthony Shomos: Productivity Commission

No 104, Staff Working Papers from Productivity Commission, Government of Australia

Abstract: This Productivity Commission staff working paper (by Anthony Shomos) was released in October 2010. Literacy and numeracy skills are key components of human capital, which is an important driver of economic growth. This paper utilises data from a 2006 survey on the literacy and numeracy skills of the Australian adult population.

Models were used to estimate the effect of improved literacy and numeracy skills on the probability of labour force participation and on wages. Results confirm previous research in the human capital literature –– that improving literacy and numeracy skills has a positive, statistically significant effect on labour market outcomes.

Improving educational attainment was also estimated to have a positive, statistically significant effect on labour force participation and on wages. However, once literacy and numeracy skills were controlled for, the effect of increasing educational attainment on labour force participation and on wages was reduced. Some of the benefit occurs because more highly educated people tend to have higher literacy and numeracy skills.

Literacy and numeracy skills are developed through education, but they can also be enhanced in other ways. Understanding the factors that influence literacy and numeracy skills is important and could be further explored with the data used in this paper.

The views expressed in this paper are those of the staff involved and do not necessarily reflect those of the Productivity Commission.

Keywords: literacy; numeracy; labour markets; human capital; labour force participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 86 pages
Date: 2010-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/1 ... -labour-outcomes.pdf Full PDF of report (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/102024/literacy-numeracy-labour-outcomes.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/102024/literacy-numeracy-labour-outcomes.pdf)
http://www.pc.gov.au/research/staffworkingpaper/li ... racy-labour-outcomes Publication webpage (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.pc.gov.au/research/staffworkingpaper/literacy-numeracy-labour-outcomes [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.pc.gov.au/research/staffworkingpaper/literacy-numeracy-labour-outcomes)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:prodsw:2010_004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Working Papers from Productivity Commission, Government of Australia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MAPS ().