Working Paper: NBER ID: w14073
Authors: Elizabeth Cascio; Damon Clark; Nora Gordon
Abstract: It is widely documented that U.S. students score below their OECD counterparts on international achievement tests, but it is less commonly known that ultimately, U.S. native adults catch up. In this paper, we explore institutional explanations for differences in the evolution of literacy over young adulthood across wealthy OECD countries. We use an international cross-section of micro data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS); these data show that cross-country differences in the age profile of literacy skills are not due to differences in individual family background, and that relatively high rates of university graduation appears to explain a good part of the U.S. "catch up." The cross-sectional design of the IALS prevents us from controlling for cohort effects, but we use a variety of other data sources to show that cohort effects are likely small in comparison to the differences by age revealed in the IALS. We go on to discuss how particular institutional features of secondary and postsecondary education correlate, at the country level, with higher rates of university completion.
Keywords: literacy; education; university graduation; OECD countries
JEL Codes: F00; I20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Higher university graduation rates in the U.S. (I23) | Significant increase in the proportion of adults achieving high-level literacy proficiency (level four or five) (I21) |
| Higher university graduation rates (I23) | Higher literacy skills (G53) |
| If U.S. university graduation rate had been lower (I24) | Literacy gap between younger and older cohorts would have been less pronounced (I24) |