The OECD Skills Outlook provides new insights into skills issues and policies that influence the well-being of individuals and countries. It analyses the linkages between skills development and a wide range of outcomes such as employment, productivity, and inclusive growth. It further examines how skills can help individuals and countries to thrive in the context of demographic change, migration, globalisation and digitalisation. Each edition, prepared with inputs from experts across the OECD, covers a particular theme, presenting new findings and policy recommendations.
This edition of the OECD Skills Outlook shows that factors beyond people’s control, such as gender, parental education and occupation, immigrant background, age, and where a person grows up, are strongly associated with the acquisition of essential 21st-century skills, including information-processing skills such as literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving, as well as social and emotional skills. A person’s circumstances also shape how these skills translate into opportunities for economic empowerment over the life course.
By considering how public policies can reduce skills disparities, this OECD Skills Outlook sets a clear policy agenda for the 21st century.