As our societies transform into knowledge societies, skills are playing an ever-increasing role in life. Despite recent efforts to consistently measure adult skills across countries, a challenge remains to understand how skills evolve over time and what the main drivers behind these changes are. By applying demographic methods to estimate the development of skills over the life course, this paper presents the reconstruction of empirical adult literacy test results along cohort lines by age, sex, and educational attainment for 44 countries for the period 1970–2015. Results suggest significant heterogeneity in the pattern of changes in literacy skills with age, reflecting the differential exposure to cognitive stimulation over the life course and suggesting that the development of skills in a country is also the consequence of a changing composition of its population. Gender, however, was found to have hardly any effect on how literacy skills evolve between the ages of 15 and 65. On the aggregate level, findings reveal considerable differences between countries—regarding both the level of skills and their development over time. Overall, it was found that massive educational expansions happening globally in the recent past only partly resulted in a corresponding rise in skills.

中文翻译：

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随着年龄的增长，读写能力的变化

随着我们的社会向知识社会转变，技能在生活中发挥着越来越重要的作用。尽管最近努力在各国持续衡量成人技能，但了解技能如何随时间演变以及这些变化背后的主要驱动因素是什么仍然是一个挑战。通过应用人口统计方法来估计技能在整个生命过程中的发展，本文介绍了 1970-2015 年期间 44 个国家按年龄、性别和受教育程度划分的群体经验成人识字测试结果的重建。结果表明，随着年龄的增长，识字技能的变化模式存在显着异质性，反映了在整个生命过程中对认知刺激的不同接触，并表明一个国家的技能发展也是其人口构成变化的结果。然而，发现性别对 15 至 65 岁之间识字技能的发展几乎没有任何影响。总体而言，研究结果揭示了国家之间的巨大差异——无论是技能水平还是随着时间的推移而发展。总体而言，人们发现，最近在全球范围内发生的大规模教育扩张只是部分地导致了技能的相应提高。调查结果揭示了国家之间的巨大差异——无论是在技能水平还是随着时间的推移而发展。总体而言，人们发现，最近在全球范围内发生的大规模教育扩张只是部分地导致了技能的相应提高。调查结果揭示了国家之间的巨大差异——无论是在技能水平还是随着时间的推移而发展。总体而言，人们发现，最近在全球范围内发生的大规模教育扩张只是部分地导致了技能的相应提高。