This study investigates the participation patterns of employer-sponsored adult education
and training by Swedish workers over the period of 1975 - 1995, and evaluates the importance of
the determinants of such provision. The study also explores the ways participation experiences in
employer-sponsored education and training influence subsequent participation, occupational
mobility and economic outcomes for Swedish workers. Data collected from 1975 to 1995 in The
Swedish Living Conditions Survey (ULF), both the cross-sectional data and its panel component,
have been analyzed. Contained in the panel are 3,319 Swedish adults who have been followed up
in the ULF from 1979 to 1995.
The study employs measures of work and job characteristics such as indicators of
occupational status, wage, union membership, length of employment, job type, job
responsibilities, influence on decision-making at the workplace, learning opportunities at the
workplace, enterprise ownership, as well measures of personal characteristics, such as age,
gender, level of formal education.
The approach taken in the evaluation of the influences of work, job and demographic
characteristics on the likelihood of receiving employer-sponsored education and training has
been to develop and estimate logistic regression models by means of which these effects during
different periods (1975, 1979, 1986/7, 1994/5) can be assessed and compared. Another three
models have been investigated, using the panel data, namely: (1) a logistic regression model
predicting subsequent participation in employer-sponsored education and training by similar
experiences at earlier career stages; (2) a multiple regression model predicting 1994/5 annual
income with participation history as a predictor; (3) a discriminant function analytical model
predicting 1994/5 occupational status with participation history as a discriminating variable.
The departure point of this study is that separate analyses have been done with the public
sector and private sector sub-data sets. The findings indicate that occupational status, level of
education, age, gender and to a less extent, union membership, and other work and job
characteristics are the more important predictors of the likelihood of participation in employersponsored
education and training for the Swedish workers in the private sector. For those
working in the public sector, institutional factors relating to management style and job
responsibility as well as age play an important part in training decisions. The findings also
indicate that youth and older age groups, particularly those with the private sector, have been
consistently under-served by provision of employer-sponsored education and training throughout
the period investigated. The results reveal that by the mid-1990s, gender was not a issue in the
public sector in terms of the participation rate but female workers were still disadvantaged in the
private sector. The findings verify a trend that the participation gaps between the well-educated
and the undereducated, and those between professionals and non-skilled and semi-skilled have
narrowed by a great magnitude, yet not adequately to close up the gaps. In 1975, the likelihood
of participation for a professional worker was nine times as high as that for a non-skilled worker
in the private sector. By 1995, the comparable figure was three times.
The findings from panel data analysis show that, for workers in the private sector, their
participation status as of the mid-1990s was significantly correlated with their participation status
back in the mid-1980s and late 1970s, even after the statistical adjustment. For the public sector
employees, their participation status as of the mid-1990s is related to participation status in the
mid-1980s only. The results of income estimation models show that all three indicators of
participation status are significantly associated with higher earnings, but a further analysis that
separates the private sector from the public sector indicates that the result applied more in the
case of the private sector employees. In contrast, none of the measures of participation status are
significantly associated with higher earnings for employees with the public sector. The findings,
as a result of discriminant function analysis, indicate that participation undertaken in the mid-
1980s, together with the earlier status of occupation and formal education background, form the
first discriminant function that classify occupational status of 1994/5, explaining 54% of the
explained variance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11202 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Xu, Gong-Li |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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