Abstract
Our contribution aims to analyze the relationship between the phenomena of social exclusion and literacy levels, and to consider the significant implication of this relationship on economic growth. The goal, which is reached by analyzing cross-country data, is firstly to describe the situation of social exclusion with the use of specific socio-economic variables, and secondly to compare the levels of education and training for each considered country. These two phenomena are mutually influenced, as a low level of literacy in affecting the employment status precludes the possibility to enter and operate freely in society, while poverty and persistent social exclusion of a person or family make difficult to address appropriate educational and training paths. Therefore, our study has rejoined two issues which influence almost all decisions adopted by policy makers, especially in the Western world. The opening issue is the level of education, which should constitute the human capital of a country, through appropriate investment, and the second one is the relational condition of social dynamics, which highlight the so-called social capital. Together these two types of intangible capitals constitute a strong support for the long-term development of a country. Our quantitative analysis is also addressed to detect differences and peculiarities among the different national realities, with the ultimate purpose to recognize which socio-economic variables affect more directly the processes of education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The countries considered by this research are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.
- 3.
The literacy rate represents the percentage of people with the ability to read and write, and in this case without specifying the level of education.
- 4.
In our analysis we take into consideration different levels of education, such as pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary education: these levels are generally found in similar ways in many countries, and represent usually from pre-primary until the so called higher education (tertiary).
- 5.
For macro groups we mean groupings of the endogenous variables based on their similarities.
- 6.
For a wider historical and social description of literacy in U.S. it is useful to consult Carl F Kaestle et al. (1993).
- 7.
This consideration is especially true for educational programmes defining literacy as critical reflection and action because they can risk to develop a way of thinking based on the cultural background of the teachers and not on the cultural affiliation of the learners.
References
Auerbach ER (1989) Toward a social-contextual approach to family literacy. Harward Educational Rev 59(2):165–181
Auerbach ER (1990) Making maening, making change. A guide to partecipatory curriculum development for adult ESL and family literacy. English Family Literacy Project, University of Massachsetts, Boston
Beder H (1991) Adult literacy: issues for policy and practice. Krieger Publishing Co., Malabar
Besset D (2001) Object-oriented implementation of numerical methods. An introduction with java and smalltalk. Morgan Kaufmann, San Fransisco, USA
Björck Å (1996) Numerical methods for least squares problems. SIAM
Boersma P, Weenik D (2001) Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Tech. Rep. 132, Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam
Bormouth HD (1974) Reading literacy: its definition and assessment. Reading Research Q 9:7–66
Breen M, Sobel D (1991) Popular oral history and literacy: a handbook. Storylinks: Learning through Dialogue, Toronto, Ontario
Cook WD (1977) Adult literacy education in the united states. International Reading Association, Newark, DE
de Gregorio J, Lee J-W (2002) Education and income inequality: new evidence from cross-country data. Rev Income Wealth 48(3):395–416
Fingeret H (1992) Adult literacy education: current and future directions, an update. ERIC clearinghouse on adult, career, and vocational education, Information series, N. 355
Freund R (2003) Statistical methods. Academic Press, London
Galor O, Moav O (2004) From physical to human capital accumulation: inequality and the process of development. Rev Econ Stud 71:1001–1026
Gillespie M (1990) Many literacies: modules for training adult beginning readers and tutors. Amsherst Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts at Boston, Boston
Gradstein M, Justman M (2002) Education, social cohesion, and economic growth. Am Econ Rev 92(4):1192–1204
Grossman HI, Kim M (1997) Human capital and predation: a positive theory of educational policy. Working papers 97–30, Department of Economics, Brown University
Grossmann V (2008) Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomics dynamics. J Macroeconomics 30:19–42
Hautecoeur JP (1997) A political review of international literacy meetings in industrialized countries 1981–1994. Int Rev Educ 43(2–3):135–157
Hoover KD, Perez SJ (2004) Truth and robustness in cross-country growth regressions. Oxford Bull Econ Stat 66(5):765
Jakeman A (2008) Environmental modelling, software and decision support. Elsevier, Amsterdam
Kaestle CF, Damon-Moore H, Tinsley K (1993) Literacy in the United States: readers and reading since 1880. Yale University Press, London
Levine R, Renelt D (1991) Cross-country studies of growth and policy. Methodological, conceptual, and statistical problems. Working paper 608. Macroeconomic Adjustment and growth division, Country Economics Department, World Bank, Washington, DC
Levine R, Renelt D (1992) A sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions. Am Econ Rev 82(4):942–963
Mardia K, Kent J (1980) Multivariate analysis. Academic, London
Mc-Clellan-Cason J, Gaines J, Hinton S, Munsey J, Sligh A, Thompson P, White C (1992) Remembering lonsdale, our community, our home: a project of the lonsdale improvement organization. Lonsdale Improvement Organization, Knoxville, TN
Micklewright J (2002) Social exclusion and children: a European view for a U.S debate. LSE STICERD research paper N. CASE 051
Moser W (1996) Linear models. A mean model approach. Academic, London
Northcutt N, Selz N, Shelton E, Nyer L, Hickok D, Humble M (1975) Adult functional competency: a summary. Division of Extension University of Texas at Austin, Austin
OECD (2001) Knowledge and skills for life: first results from PISA 2000. Paris
OECD (2003) PISA 2003 assessment framework—mathematics, reading, science and problem solving, knowledge and skills. Paris
OECD (2006) PISA 2006—science competencies for tomorrow’s world. Paris
OECD (2009) PISA 2009 assessment framework—Key competencies in reading, mathematics and science. Paris
OECD (2010) Adult literacy. Centre for effective learning environments. OECD, Paris
Rainwater L, Smeeding TM, Coder J (2001) Poverty across states, nations and continents. In: Vleminckx K, Smeeding TM (eds) Child well-being, child poverty and child policy in modern nations: what do we know? The Policy Press, Bristol
Schwabacher S (1989) Transforming communities through creating a community literature. Presented to the California Association for Bilingual Education, Anaheim, California, February
Shore L, Sheppard (1996) The precision of instrumental variables estimates with grouped data. Industrial relations section, Department of Economics, Princeton University
Statistics Canada (SC) and organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) (2000) Literacy in the information age: final report of the international adult literacy survey. Ottawa and Paris
Statistics Canada (SC) and organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) (2003) Adult literacy and lifeskills survey, Ottawa and Paris
Statistics Canada (SC) and organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD) (2005) Learning a living: first results of the adult literacy and life skills survey, Ottawa and Paris
Székely GJ, Rizzo ML (2005) Hierarchical clustering via joint between-within distances: extending ward’s minimum variance method. J Classification 22:151–183
Temple J, Johnson PA (1998) Social capability and economic growth. Q J Econ 113(3):965–990
UNESCO (1978) Estimates and projections of illiteracy, current study and research in statistics. UNESCO, Paris, p 154
Acknowledgements
The responsibility for the contents of this article lies entirely with the authors and it should not be attributed to their affiliated institutions. The authors wish to thank Giuliana Parodi, Dario Sciulli, Ainura Uzagalieva, two anonymous referees and the participants at the XXV National Conference of Labour Economics, AIEL, Pescara (Italy), September 9–10, 2010 for suggestions, useful comments and the support received.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bucciarelli, E., Pagliari, C., Muratore, F., Odoardi, I. (2012). A Comparative Analysis of Literacy Rate in Contributing to Social Exclusion Insights. In: Parodi, G., Sciulli, D. (eds) Social Exclusion. AIEL Series in Labour Economics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2772-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2772-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Physica, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-7908-2771-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-7908-2772-9
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)