Search

Lifelong learning is often promoted in ageing societies, but little is known about its returns or governments' ability to advance it. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in Switzerland. We find no significant average effects of voucher-induced adult education on earnings, employment, and subsequent education one year after treatment. But effects are heterogeneous: Low-education individuals are most likely to profit from adult education, but least likely to use the voucher. The findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of existing untargeted voucher programs in promoting labor market outcomes through adult education. (Contains 10 tables, 1 figure and 12 footnotes.)

Demographic change in industrial countries will influence educational spending in potentially two ways. On the one hand, the decline in the number of school-age children should alleviate the financial pressure. On the other hand, the theoretical/empirical literature has established that the concomitantly increasing proportion of elderly in the population can influence the propensity of politicians to spend on education. Using a panel of the Swiss Cantons for the period from 1990 to 2002, we find that the education system has exhibited little elasticity in adjusting to changes in the school-age population, and that the share of the elderly population has a significantly negative influence on the willingness to spend on public education. (Contains 3 tables and 13 notes.)