This paper identifies individual and regional risk factors for hospitalizations caused by heat within the German population over 65 years of age. Using administrative insurance claims data and a machine-learning-based regression model, we causally estimate heterogeneous heat effects and explore...

Concerns about loneliness and social isolation are growing more than ever. With the COVID-19 pandemic entering its second year, there are fears that the toll on loneliness could have consequences long after the virus recedes. This study offers a comparative overview of the incidence and...

Lifelong learning is often promoted in ageing societies, but little is known about its returns or governments' ability to advance it. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in Switzerland. We find no significant average...

Policy debates about the balance of vocational and general education programs focus on the school-to-work transition. But with rapid technological change, gains in youth employment from vocational education may be offset by less adaptability and thus diminished employment later in life. To test...

Training programs for the unemployed typically involve teaching specific skills in demand amongst employers. In 1997, Swedish unemployed could also choose general training at the upper secondary school level. Despite the dominance of programs offering specific training, long-term relative...

After the German Reunification in 1990, East Germany transitioned from a centrally planned economic system to a market economy. At the time, upskilling through adult education was deemed essential for the successful integration of the workforce into the labor market. Besides substantial...

Adult education can mitigate the productivity decline in aging societies if older workers are willing to learn. We examine a generous partial retirement reform in Germany that led to a massive increase in early retirement. Using county-level administrative data on voluntary education activities,...

Roughly one third of a cohort drop out of high school across OECD countries, and developing effective tools to address prime-aged high school dropouts is a key policy question. We leverage high quality Norwegian register data, and for identification we exploit reforms enabling access to high...

Evaluations of adults in formal education (AE) are typically based on earnings measured 5-10 years after program enrollment. This paper estimates returns up to 24 years after enrollment, and explore results for 15 cohorts of first-time registered in AE in Sweden 1994-2008 with at least a 10-year...

Most OECD countries experience high unemployment rates and declining growth in higher educational attainment. An often suggested government policy is therefore to allocate resources towards formal schooling for adults. However, returns on such investments are uncertain and the foregone earnings...