Does adult education at upper secondary level influence annual wage earnings?

higher studies display lower returns than individuals without a prior AE. There
are several possible explanations to this. One is that AE individuals more often
drop out from longer educational programs. It could thus imply that AE is a
lower quality preparation for higher studies. Also, the hypothesis of AE indi-
viduals “escaping” the labour market by way of enrolling in higher education
cannot be rejected. Yet another explanation is that those with no prior AE use
short higher educations to gain promotion at a present employer. Individuals
with a prior AE may have a weaker attachment to the labour market, and as a
result short university educations generate lower returns.

To complete the analysis of Table 11, let us turn to the overall returns to
higher education. For males, they show the expected pattern as the payoff in-
creases with the length of studies, although the group with more than five years
shows irregular results. In contrast, the estimates of females do not really dis-
play any returns to higher education until the fourth year. Already in Table 5 of
the descriptive section, an irregular pattern in annual wage earnings was visi-
ble. The issue of career choices, predominantly in the public sector, was pro-
posed as a possible partial explanation.

IFAU - Does adult education at upper secondary level influence annual wage earnings?

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