This paper studies the impact of education reforms in Estonia in the 1990s on adult skills using the OECD PIAAC surveys. Estonia implemented extensive education reforms in the early 1990s throughout Estonian-speaking schools while Russian-speaking schools were exposed to less comprehensive reforms, which were implemented later. A large minority of Estonia’s population at the time was enrolled in Russian-speaking schools providing a unique opportunity to measure the impact of education reforms on literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills among adults by comparing improvements in PIAAC performance among Estonian and Russian speakers. Difference-in-difference estimation suggests that the reforms led to an adult skill dividend of around 15 to 30 percent of a standard deviation. This translates to a wage (productivity) premium of around 5 to 12 percent.

本文使用经合组织的PIAAC调查研究了1990年代爱沙尼亚的教育改革对成人技能的影响。爱沙尼亚在1990年代初对讲爱沙尼亚语的学校进行了广泛的教育改革，而对讲俄语的学校则进行了较不全面的改革，后来又实施了这些改革。当时爱沙尼亚的一小部分人口已经进入讲俄语的学校就读，这为通过比较爱沙尼亚人和讲俄语的PIAAC成绩的提高来衡量教育改革对成年人的识字，计算和解决问题技能的影响提供了独特的机会。差异差异估计表明，改革导致成人技能红利约为标准差的15％到30％。