The Incidence and Intensity of Formal Lifelong Learning

We exploit a rich high quality register-based employer-employee panel data set to investigate the incidence and intensity of government co-sponsored training for the Danish adult population. We focus specifically on training over the working life cycle and find that the levels of participation vary across genders. We consider both the incidence (take-up in a given year) and intensity (hours conditional on enrolment) of training. We find evidence of considerable lifelong learning with regards to enrolment in basic and vocational training regardless of gender, whereas post-secondary training enrolment usually takes place early in life with a smooth decline over the working life cycle. Once the enrolment decision is made, however, and once a comprehensive conditioning set is included there are no striking differences in hours in training with regards to gender. Neither hours in vocational nor hours in post-secondary training are strongly age dependent. Hours in basic training do decrease significantly with age but the effects are very small.