Inequality in adult education participation across national contexts: is growing employer support exacerbating or mitigating inequality in participation?

Abstract

Over the span of 20-30 years, evidence suggests that participation in adult education (inclusive of undertaking for job-related purposes) is on a significant upward trend since the 1990s in most OECD and many EU countries. The upward trend may be attributed partly to the increasing interest by employers (private, public, and non-governmental sectors) to invest in adult education due to its substantial benefits. As employer investment grows, who gets employer support to participate in adult education thus becomes an important research and policy question, particularly since inequality in participation may exacerbate social inequalities of various kinds. The purpose of this article is to explore whether the trend of increased participation in employer-supported adult education is exacerbating or mitigating the Matthew effect across different countries. It provides estimates of the change in probabilities of participation in employersupported adult education by various individual, socio-demographic, and job-related characteristics associated with adults between the period of 1994-1998 and 2013. Results of the data analysis based on the 2013 OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Competencies (PIAAC) and the 1994-1998 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) suggest that the growth of employer-supported adult education may be playing a role in mitigating inequality in participation. Reduced differences over time in the probabilities of participation between contrast categories associated with various individual, socio-demographic, and job-related characteristics (e. g. women compared to men, lowest educated compared to highest educated, etc.) are interpreted as reduced inequalities in the probability of participation associated with those contrast categories. Further research on additional and updated datasets is warranted to explore the trend of whether growing employer support for adult education is exacerbating or mitigating inequality in adult education participation in different countries.