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Abstract It
is widely documented that U.S.
students score below their OECD counterparts on international achievement
tests, but it is less commonly known that ultimately, U.S. native adults
catch up. In this paper, we explore institutional explanations for
differences in the evolution of literacy over young adulthood across wealthy
OECD countries. We use an international cross-section of micro data from the
International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS); these data show that
cross-country differences in the age profile of literacy skills are not due
to differences in individual family background, and that relatively high
rates of university graduation appears to explain a good part of the U.S.
"catch up." The cross-sectional design of the IALS prevents us from
controlling for cohort effects, but we use a variety of other data sources to
show that cohort effects are likely small in comparison to the differences by
age revealed in the IALS. We go on to discuss how particular institutional
features of secondary and postsecondary education correlate, at the country
level, with higher rates of university completion.
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