Does training make a difference?

A growing emphasis on skills and competences has characterised the last decade. Skills are increasingly perceived as a critical input to revive the economies of industrialised countries after the recent downturn, to support catch up by developing countries, to reap the full benefits of technological progress, and to allow for the employability of individuals along longer and longer working lives and more and more frequent changes at the workplace. In a turbulent and complex world individuals must not only command the skills needed for active participation in production and social activities, but also display the capability to adapt their skills to changing requirements. However, the consequences of a growing emphasis on skills and skill adaptation are not clear. On the one hand, this trend results in a strong push towards continuous learning, hence towards training and life-long education. On the other hand, some authors question the desirability of public and private investment in adult education compared to investment in school and pre-school education and point out the declining returns of training with employee age. More information is needed on the relationship between training and skill proficiency before planning costly and hardly reversible investments in education and vocational systems. The proposed paper investigates how training and adult education impact individual performance based on the Survey of Adult Skills promoted by OECD in 22 countries within the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). PIACC data, collected in 2012, provide information on current and past work experience, education, training and personal background of stratified national samples of individuals aged 16-65. In addition, PIACC reports an assessment of the literacy skills and the numeracy skills of survey individuals and, for 20 countries, an assessment of problem solving skills in technology-rich environments. The first results from the Survey of Adult Skills show that the distribution of adults' proficiency in literacy, numeracy and problem solving highly varies across OECD countries (http://skills.oecd.org/skillsoutlook.html). Also participation in job-related and non-job related training is unevenly distributed by country, despite a common trend towards a direct relationship between the intensity of adult education and training and the quality of human capital. However, these data provide no clear information about the effectiveness of adult education and training in fostering effective individual skills and competences. The proposed paper tests whether past training is a significant determinant of individual proficiency after accounting for both employee-specific factors (e.g., education, labour market experience, personal background, or personal traits) and employer-specific variables (e.g., firm size, industry, or employer involvement in training activities).