Adult Qualifications and Pay: Evidence from the UK

What the research found

Learning that happens after you have left school and started work is often called lifelong learning. Blanden, Buscha, Sturgis and Urwin (2012) defined it as gaining a certified qualification in adulthood and looked at what happened to earnings afterwards.

They used the British Household Panel Survey from 1991 to 2006. Because it follows the same people every year, the researchers could compare each person before and after the qualification. This approach, called fixed effects, removes differences that don’t change over time, such as innate ability or personality.

The results differed by gender.

• Women: gaining a qualification as an adult was associated with hourly wages about 10% higher in the medium run.
• Men: at first, wages looked higher after the qualification. But once the researchers accounted for whether wages were already growing before the qualification, the difference disappeared.

How to read it

The result for men is a textbook example of how to read research. The men who gained qualifications were already on a rising wage path. It is likely not that the qualification made their pay grow, but that people whose pay was growing were the ones getting qualifications. This is called selection. Comparing simple before-and-after numbers can overstate the effect of learning.

For women, the authors interpret the result as the qualification raising later earnings. But this is an analysis of observational data, not an experiment. If something that changes over time, such as children growing older or starting to think about a job change, affects both the decision to study and later pay, it cannot be fully removed. The safe reading is: in the UK, women who gained qualifications as adults tended to have higher hourly wages afterwards.

The study alone does not tell us why men and women differ. Possible reasons include women being more likely to return to study after a career break, or differences in the kinds of qualifications taken, but these are guesses.

In Japan, an analysis of regular employees found that the link between self-directed study and wages disappeared once ability and other factors were taken into account, while noting that gaining qualifications might be connected to higher wages (see our article on self-study in Japan).

A small step for today

What this study suggests is that learning with a clear, certified end point showed a clearer link with pay, at least for women in the UK, than learning with no visible milestone.

Try connecting “Studied for 30 minutes” in the app to a goal.

1. Pick one qualification that is valued in your current job or the job you want next.
2. Put the exam date or the registration deadline in your calendar.
3. Each day, write one line on which part of the syllabus your 30 minutes went to.

A qualification is not the goal in itself; it is a way to make what you have learned visible to others. As the selection effect shows, outcomes vary a lot between people, so compare yourself with who you were last year, not with others.

Sources

• [C3] Blanden, Buscha, Sturgis & Urwin (2012) Measuring the earnings returns to lifelong learning in the UK. Economics of Education Review.