The Adult Education Initiative and Cognitive Skills: Long-Term Evidence

Abstract: We investigate the relationship between participation in the Adult Education Initiative (AEI) and cognitive skills. Using propensity score matching, we find that AEI participants do not perform better than non-participants. This provides new evidence explaining the absence of positive general earnings and employment effects in the existing literature. The results are in particular driven by significantly lower performance among male participants. Female participants do not perform significantly better or worse, relative to non-participating females. This sheds light on the gender gap in terms of labor market outcomes found in the recent literature. It also has important implications for the understanding of the heterogeneity of the human capital production function in adult education and for future policy design.