Earning a college degree increases a person's life outcomes in income, employment, health, and quality of life. The average person with a bachelor's degree earns almost twice as much as a high school graduate and nearly triple that of someone who did not finish high school. The unemployment rate for people with bachelor's degrees is about…

An earlier report presented preliminary findings on the wider benefits of higher education in England, drawing on data collected at age 33 from the National Child Development Study, based on a cohort born in 1958 and a sample of more than 16,000. This report updates the earlier conclusions through new findings from a more extensive analysis…

This chartbook, developed for participants in the 1981 White House Conference on Aging, depicts past, present, and projected developments in demographics, economics, and other areas to explain the size and makeup of the older population and its economic and social roles in society. Each of the 70 charts, classified under seven headings, includes a…

The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) examined three types of literacy--prose, document, and quantitative--among the entire older adult population and various subgroups thereof. Of the nationally representative sample of 26,091 adults interviewed during the NALS, 2,267 were aged 60-69, 1,005 were aged 70-79, and 442 were at least 80 years…

To assess the long-term impacts of adult literacy programs, the Center for Literacy Studies conducted the Longitudinal Study of Adult Literacy Participants in Tennessee from 1991-95. The study focused on changes in the lives of 450 participants in the domains of work, family, and community after they enrolled in literacy programs. Participants…

In 1996, follow-up questionnaires were mailed to a racially and ethnically stratified sample of 328 Coloradans who had earned General Educational Development (GED) diplomas in October-December 1995. Although responses were received from 235 (70%) of those surveyed, the response rates for African-Americans and Asian/Pacific Islanders were too low…

This paper addresses how to measure the performance of programs by measuring the outcomes of program participation for learners. Based on studies conducted in Tennessee in which adult learners reported a broader and more complex set of outcomes than the three "core indicators" mandated by Title II of the 1998 Workforce Investment Act…

A study assessed the impact of an Adult Basic Education (ABE) program on a sample of students enrolled in the Philadelphia ABE classes during the 1977-1978 school year. In order to assess the long-term effects of the ABE program, the researcher interviewed a random sample of 267 voluntary participants of the Philadelphia ABE day session after an…