Skills-adjusted human capital shows rising global gap

Area of Science:

• Economics
• Demography
• Education Policy

Background:

• Human capital, defined as acquired skills, drives economic growth but is poorly measured globally.
• Existing metrics often focus on education quantity, ignoring actual skills and demographic consistency.
• Current methods inaccurately represent working-age populations' skills by using data from younger, schooling cohorts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a demographically consistent measure of adult literacy skills for global, historical analysis.
• To introduce the skills in literacy adjusted mean years of schooling (SLAMYS) indicator.
• To analyze global trends in adult skills and identify disparities.

Main Methods:

• Utilized direct adult literacy assessments by age and sex.
• Employed demographic backprojection and statistical estimation techniques.
• Constructed the SLAMYS indicator for the 20-64 age group across 185 countries (1970-2015).

Main Results:

• Presented SLAMYS, a novel indicator for adult literacy skills.
• Showcased trends in SLAMYS for 185 countries from 1970 to 2015.
• Highlighted a widening global skills gap between high- and low-performing nations.

Conclusions:

• SLAMYS offers a more accurate representation of global human capital than traditional metrics.
• The study reveals significant and increasing disparities in adult skills worldwide.
• Findings underscore the need for policies addressing the global skills gap.