How to Foster Lifelong Learning: Evidence From a Large and Generous Educational Leave Program
Lifelong learning is of increasing importance for developed countries facing structural change and rising labour market dynamics. To foster lifelong learning, Austria introduced an educational leave programme ("Bildungskarenz") in 1998. Two reforms, in 2001 and 2008, have since made this programme one of the most generous educational leave programmes among OECD countries. The 2001 reform increased the leave benefit to the level of the unemployment replacement rate, but only for employees of age 45 or older. For those under 45 the benefit level remained at the much-lower level of subsistence allowance. This differential treatment ended in 2008, when a major reform aligned the leave benefit for employees under the age of 45 to those for older employees. Using administrative data on all private sector employees in Austria the research proposed in this project will use this 2008 reform to analyse the causal effect of an increase in benefit generosity on programme take-up. We will also analyse whether the reform has had heterogeneous effects on participation in lifelong learning for different subgroups of the labour force. Furthermore, we will investigate whether participation in lifelong learning has a positive effect on the wage of programme participants, whether the 2008 reform had an effect on the difference between pre- and post-participation wages and which subgroups show the largest benefit from taking educational leave. Finally, we will analyse whether participation in lifelong learning increases individuals' resilience against macroeconomic shocks and investigate whether those who took educational leave had lower unemployment during the Great Recession.