Basic skills and participation in working life for the ageing workforce

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Basic skills and participation in working life
for the ageing workforce

• Reidar J. Mykletun, Trude Furunes and Egil
  Gabrielsen
• "Contemporary Problems of Prolonging Work
  Ability.Age Management Extending the Work
  Life"October 9-10, 2008. Tallinn

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Background
Demographic development
Shortage of workforce 1 unemployment
67
60-66
Ageing workforce - Retention - Workability -
Employability
50-59
20-49
Year
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Problem statement

• To what extent do basic skills in the sense of
• document and prose reading skills
• numeric skills and
• general problem solving skills
• predict participation in working life, when
  controlling for self-reported health, level of
  education, gender and age, all of which known to
  have potential capacities to exclude people from
  the active workforce?

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Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (The ALL
study - A successor of IALS

• Literacy (Prose and Doc)
• Numeracy
• Problem solving
• Extended Questionnaire
• Participating countries
• Canada
• Italy
• Norway
• Switzerland
• US

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Methodology

• Interviews developed by Statistics Canada and
  Educational Testing Service New Jersey
• Norwegian part of the Adult Literary and Life
  Skills Study
• Financed by Ministry of Education and Research
• Random sample drawn by Statistics Norway, 5600
  participants
• 320 specially trained interviewers
• 2 hours of interviews per person,
• mainly in the participants home
• Response rate 60

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Two literacy scales
Using printed and written information to
function in society, to achieve ones goals and
to develop ones knowledge and potential
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Numeracy scale
Numeracy is the knowledge and skills required
to effectively manage and respond to the
mathematical demands of diverse situations
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Problem-solving scale
Problem-solving is goal directed thinking and
action in situations for which no routine
solution procedure is available
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Age and participation in working life
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Document reading skills and age
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Document reading skills and participation in
working life
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Basic skills and participation in the workforce
(average skills scores)
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Health and participation in working life (Percent)
Self-reported health conditions
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Health and document reading skills
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Age and health
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Age and level of education
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Level of education and document reading skills
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Relative impacts of basic skills(Stepwise
logistic regression)
Variable ExpB ExpB ExpB ExpB ExpB ExpB
Reading skill level 1 12,2 9.4 5.8 5.2 5.0 3.9
Reading skill level 2 5.2 4.3 3.0 2.9 2.8 2.1
Reading skill level 3 2.4 2.1 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.7
Health bad 6.3 6.1 5.5 5.2 5.1
Health moderate 1.8 1.8 1.7 1.7 2.0
Health good 1,2(ns) 1.1(ns) 1.2(ns) 1.1(ns) 1.2(ns)
Comprehensive school 2.1 1.6 1.6 1.5
Sec/vocational training 1.7 1.4 1.3(ns) 1.5
Lower University 1.2ns 1.1ns 1.1ns 1.1ns
Refresher courses 2.7 2.8 2.4
Gender (m 1 f 2) 1.6 1.6
Age 46-50 .8(ns)
Age 51-55 .9(ns)
Age 56-60 1.4(ns)
Age 61-65 6.6
Nagelkerkes R squared .14 .26 .27 .30 .31 .39
Model chi-square (sig) 239.6 208 20.6 63.4 16.2 159.4
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Conclusions

• Basic skills
• Predict participation in working life
• Interact with other relevant predictors like
  health, education, gender and age
• Only Bad health and Age 61-65 years is a stronger
  predictor than basic skills with regards to
  exclusion from the workforce
• Lack of basic skills may limit retention and
  employability of senior workforce
• Further research may focus on
• Impacts of basic skills maintenance for
  grown-ups can the observed problems be
  counteracted?
• Task and operation-specific strategies to
  overcome practical workplace problems

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Recommendations

• Increase work participation by improving basic
  skills?
• Education (basic)
• Life long learning
• Work content and processes
• Culture / spare time activities
• Continuous efforts
• Long program horizons
• Public sector concern and involvement
• Joint efforts between the social partners of
  working life
• Internal company efforts

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