UCLA

One of the big surprises I had when I started working with the latest OECD data on adult skills was that there were hardly any changes in the overall literacy proficiency profiles across countries that had participated in both PIAAC (the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies conducted in 2012) and IALS (the International Adult Literacy Survey in the 1990s). In fact, small average declines were recorded in a number of countries. This was particularly strange given the fact that tertiary level qualifications among adult populations had increased substantially in the interim period in the majority of the countries. How could this be? Should I begin to doubt the highly intuitive idea that schooling and formal education develops literacy proficiency or at least reinforces it (especially at the higher level)? Or should I believe, like far too many still do, that intelligence is fixed at birth and in the family? And that the measure of literacy in PIAAC and IALS simply reflects IQ that is untrainable? In any case, the apparent stagnation in overall literacy at the population level in so many OECD countries prompted me to take a closer look at the trend data made available from IALS and PIAAC, and to consider some of the major drivers affecting literacy proficiency profiles across countries. There are few other comparative data like these that can help us improve our insights on what drives the development and maintenance of literacy in adult populations.