The importance of continuous training within employment careers grew strongly during the recent decades. Rapid technological change often renders initial education and training insufficient as careers progress. Therefore, many argue that “lifelong learning” should become the norm for workers. Yet, the benefits of training participation for workers are still partly unclear.
The aim of this project is to broaden the knowledge about the returns to further training. To achieve this, the analyses take into account the multifaceted nature of further training. This includes the following distinctions:
Labor income is the prime income source in most households in modern capitalist societies. Thus, large parts of the population rely on stable jobs to maintain their standard of living and employment interruptions such as job loss often lead to downward mobility. However, the effects of job loss and unemployment on a person’s standard of living are not determined by losses in labor income alone. Because of the risks entailed by job loss, all modern welfare states implemented some form of unemployment insurance. Furthermore, there are two other ways through which downward income mobility after job loss may be mitigated. First, rapid re-employment in a well-paid job may maintain economic well-being.
How can we change social norms, the standards describing typical or desirable behavior? Because individuals’ perceptions of norms guide their personal behavior, influencing these perceptions is one way to create social change. And yet individuals do not form perceptions of typical or desirable behavior in an unbiased manner. Individuals attend to select sources of normative information, and their resulting perceptions rarely match actual rates of behavior in their environment. Thus, changing social norms requires an understanding of how individuals perceive norms in the first place.