Do Literacy and Numeracy Pay Off? On the Relationship between Basic Skills and Earnings

Manfred Antoni and Guido Heineck

No 6882, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as administrative earnings data. Our results indicate that earnings are positively related to both types of skills. There furthermore is no evidence for non-linearity in this relationship and only little heterogeneity when differentiating by sub-groups.

Keywords: literacy; numeracy; earnings; administrative data; Germany; ALWA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Do literacy and numeracy pay off?: on the relationship between basic skills and earnings (2012)
Working Paper: Do literacy and numeracy pay off? On the relationship between basic skills and earnings (2012)
Working Paper: Do literacy and numeracy pay off? On the relationship between basic skills and earnings (2012)
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