Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Literacy skills are a prerequisite to fully participate in society and are related to better chances on the labour market. Results from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) show that a substantial proportion of adults in many participating countries possesses only low literacy skills. In Germany this proportion amounts to a fifth of the adult population, which warrants further investigation into factors that might be related to low skills. The aim of the paper is to investigate how selected background characteristics are related to low literacy and how literacy is related to certain life outcomes. Using the most recent German data from PIAAC 2023, we contrasted two groups: low literates and medium-to-high literates and compared them according to various determinants or outcomes of literacy skills. Significant differences between the two groups were found for age, gender, language background, educational attainment, employment status, occupation group, job satisfaction, and social background. Additionally, averages for life satisfaction, social trust, and political efficacy showed significant differences between low literates and medium-to-high literates. Furthermore, a linear probability model for the selected characteristics showed that, when controlling for other factors, each of these separate factors contributed to the probability of being low literate. The strongest effects were found for low education and having another native language than German.
Institution: GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Language: English
Topic: Education Systems and Policy
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411761591