Despite the policy importance of lifelong learning, there is very little hard evidence from the UK on a) the extent of lifelong learning, b) who undertakes lifelong learning and why and c) the benefits  of lifelong learning. This paper attempts to address all three of these questions.

Specifically it identifies the factors that determine whether someone undertakes lifelong learning, defined very narrowly for the purposes of this research as learning between the ages of 33 and 42 that results in a qualification. It then models the effect of the different qualifications acquired via lifelong learning on individuals’ economic outcomes, namely wages and the likelihood of being employed.

The paper uses a rich longitudinal panel data set of individuals born in 1958, called the National Child Development Study. The rich data arising from this cohort study enable us to identify the effect of lifelong learning on wages and employment after allowing for a myriad of other factors that also affect these labour market outcomes. A particular modelling issue that we attempt to overcome is endogeneity bias. This bias arises if characteristics, such as innate ability, make some people more likely to undertake lifelong learning and also ensures that they earn more anyway. If we do not allow for these characteristics, e.g. by including measures of ability in our model, then some of the apparent benefit of lifelong learning may really be down to the fact that only very able individuals undertake lifelong learning in the first place.

We do not claim to have overcome this potential source of bias and indeed our results suggest it may be a problem in our research. Future work will focus further on this issue. Our results provide strong evidence that there are employment effects associated with lifelong learning. Those who were out of the labour market in 1991 were more likely to be in work in 2000 if they had undertaken lifelong learning in the intervening period. We also found convincing evidence that learning leads to learning. Undertaking one episode of lifelong learning increased the probability of the individual undertaking more learning. Conversely, those who had attempted a course leading to a qualification between the ages of 33 and 42 but failed to obtain the qualification were less likely to be current learners in the 2000 survey. The results also show that, for individuals with no qualifications in 1991, those who undertook lifelong learning between 1991 and 2000 were earning higher wages in 2000 than those who had not engaged in lifelong learning over this period. We found only limited evidence of positive wage effects from lifelong learning for other groups. For example, women who obtain a degree or level 4 occupational qualifications (e.g. nursing, teacher training) between the ages of 33 and 42 earn more than their otherwise similar peers who do not, while for men, the results suggest that higher degrees yield a wage premium if taken as a mature student. Our research has highlighted some important research questions. Firstly, we need to improve our understanding of who is undertaking lifelong learning, and why. We know that adult learning may lead to more adult learning. However, we still know very little about the motivation behind any lifelong learning. Only when we have a clearer picture of why people undertake lifelong learning (and who pays for it) can we understand when and why lifelong learning may or may not have effects on wages and employment outcomes. For instance, one would not expect lifelong learning that is undertaken for non-economic and non-job related reasons necessarily to lead to higher wages. In fact it may result in lower wages, if individuals have to take time off work or become less focused on their work as a result of being lifelong learners.

This does not mean however that there are not non-economic benefits associated with lifelong learning. Another point that needs to be borne in mind is that our study focuses on qualification-oriented learning and this is a very particular subset of all lifelong learning. Also, the possible differences between short-term and long-term effects of lifelong learning have not been explored in this paper. For all these reasons, we propose to continue our research in partnership with the DfES Centre for the Wider Benefits of Learning, which will enable us to investigate lifelong learning in a more holistic manner. We intend to consider other potential, non-economic, outcomes and to try to understand the motivation behind the extensive amount of lifelong learning that is evident in the NCDS data.