General Adult Education of Displaced Workers in a Recession: The Effects on University Enrollment and Graduation

This article studies a sample of displaced workers during the deep 1990s recession in Sweden and estimates the effect of secondary-level adult education on tertiary-level educational attainment. Plant closures and mass layoffs are used to identify job separations unrelated to individual productivity. Results indicate a large positive effect of general adult education on displaced workers' further investment in human capital by continuing on to university education. These findings offer some explanation of findings in previous research, i.e. slow recovery of post-treatment earnings among workers enrolled in adult education, with positive treatment effects on earnings emerging in the long run.