The effects of adult literacy on earnings and employment

Resumo

This paper provides evidence of the effects of adult literacy on individuals’ income and employability in Brazil based on information obtained from the monthly employment survey (PME). The OLS results indicate that after controlling for observable characteristics, there is a 21.25% increase in wages for individuals who become literate; however, there is no significant impact on employability. Moreover, the findings show an 8.1% increase in the probability of being employed in the formal sector. We also explore the longitudinal structure of the dataset to control for unobservable fixed characteristics of individuals. The fixed-effects estimators show smaller effects compared to the OLS estimators. We find that literacy has a 4.4% effect on wages and a 4.3% impact on the probability of being formally employed. The effects are significantly different from zero.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Estudo

Ano

2012

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Não informado

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/9999

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

Adult literacyLongitudinal dataLabor force participation and earningsEconomia