What does age have to do with skills proficiency?

The Survey of Adult Skills finds that adults aged 55 to 65 are less proficient in literacy and numeracy than adults aged 25 to 34. Adults tend to lose their information-processing skills as they age, especially if they do not use them. While older adults may compensate for this loss by developing other valuable skills, the importance of being proficient in information-processing skills in determining wages and employment does not diminish as workers age. But differences in skills proficiency that are related to age vary widely across countries, implying that skills policies can affect the evolution of proficiency over a lifetime. And while older adults are generally less proficient than younger adults, they do no worse, and often better, than younger adults in terms of labour market outcomes. The paper concludes that, to ensure economies do not suffer unduly as the working population ages, school leavers will need a basic set of information-processing skills on which they can build as they grow older. Also, more opportunities are needed for high quality adult and on-the-job training so that older adults can maintain the skill they already have and acquire new ones.

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