PIAAC

The present article connects a secondary analysis of quantitative data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) with the theoretical approach of ‘literacy practices’ and related research results from the so-called New Literacy Studies (NLS) tradition, which follows a cultural practices paradigm.

According to the literacy as social practice approach, the analysis of adults’ literacy and numeracy practices could provide relevant policy information about how to address target groups in adult literacy and basic education. Thus, a Latent Class Analysis was carried out with the German PIAAC dataset in order to differentiate the adult population by their uses of literacy, numeracy and ICT.

As a result of this procedure, three subgroups of adults can be distinguished by the frequency in which they use selected skill-related activities. Surprisingly, an adult’s individual literacy level does not clearly predict group membership. A further interesting result is that participants in one of the groups seem to compensate for the few chances they have to use their skills at work by using them more often in their everyday life. Both results contribute to the need to draw a more differentiated picture of adults with lower literacy skills.

This paper presents, a two-step analysis based on the new Piaac data (Programme for the International Assesment of Adult Population). Specifically: a) a study of the effects of ascriptive variables (as gender, parents’ education, etc.) on educational attainment in four age cohorts (born from 1946 to 1955, from 1956 to 1965, from 1966 to 1975 and from 1976 to 1985) aimed to produce an overview of the structure of educational inequalities over time; b) an analysis of the effect of the educational level when testing proficiency in reading skills (controlled by ascriptive variables and educational attainment). Thanks to the Piaac data features (which not only include background variables and the educational level, but also cognitive skills), this study aims to explore the advantage linked to the different educational levels on reading skills in the four age cohorts. Another goal of this essay is to analyze the influence of the ascriptive variables over the relationship between educational level and cognitive skills, in particular evaluating the effect of each of these independent variables and their dynamic over time.

Founded on several highly influential quantitative studies, the past decade
has witnessed the OECD and World Bank increasingly converge on the
view that cognitive levels of students and education quality, as proxied
by international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), are the primary
determinant of national economic growth worldwide. More recent OECD
and World Bank pronouncements have further suggested these
dynamics are clearly illustrated in East Asia’s education and ‘Economic
Miracle’, in particular the cases of South Korea and Singapore. Herein we
utilise the OECD’s own data to examine this new development narrative,
finding little evidence in support of these claims.

Occupational mismatch has been a hot topic in the economics literature in the last decades, but still today there is no consensus on how to conceptualize and measure this phenomenon.
We  explore  the  unique  opportunity  offered  by  the  recent  PIAAC  survey  to  measure occupational mismatch at individual level based on both education variables (overeducation) and  on  skills  proficiency  variables  (overskilling),  using  both  objective  and  subjective methods  for  each.  We  use  data  for  17  European  countries  and  compute  a  total  of  20 indicators of occupation mismatch. 
We  find  that  indeed  the  conceptualization  and  measurement  of  this  phenomenon  play  an important role and that education and skill mismatch do not measure the same phenomenon. In fact, only a low percentage of population is both education and skill mismatched, while the majority is mismatched in only one of these types. At country level, we find a negative correlation  between  the  incidence  of  education  and  skill  mismatch,  which  has  important policy implications when it comes to address this labour market inefficiency.

The capacity to manage information and solve problems using computers is becoming a necessity as ICT applications permeate the workplace, the classroom and lecture hall, the home, and social interaction more generally. The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to measure adults’ proficiency in several key information-processing skills, namely literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. Adults who are highly proficient in the skills measured by the survey are likely to be able to make the most of the opportunities created by the technological and structural changes modern societies are going through. Those who struggle to use new technologies are at greater risk of losing out.
The results from the first round of the survey, covering 24 countries and economies, were reported in the OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills. Another nine countries and economies collected data during 2014-15. This report presents the main findings for all 33 countries and economies that participated in the study over the two rounds. It finds substantial variation across countries/economies in adults’ average proficiency in the three domains assessed. More than 80 score points separate the highest- and lowest-scoring countries in literacy and numeracy, although many countries and economies score within a relatively close range of each other. Within countries and economies, proficiency scores in literacy and numeracy vary considerably: on average, 62 score points separate the 25% of adults who attained the highest and lowest scores in literacy; in numeracy, 68 score points separate those two groups.
In almost all countries/economies, a sizeable proportion of adults (18.5% of adults, on average) has poor reading skills and poor numeracy skills (22.7% of adults, on average). Around one in four adults has no or only limited experience with computers or lacks confidence in their ability to use computers. In addition, nearly one in two adults is proficient only at or below Level 1 in problem solving in technology-rich environments. This adult can only use familiar applications to solve problems that involve few steps and explicit criteria, such as sorting e-mails into pre-existing folders.

This study builds an empirical research model that explores societal and individual antecedents of adult learning and examines the adult learning effect on problem-solving skills in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Considering national differences, it uses multilevel data sources available from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2008-2013 and the OECD data lab. The results from this study suggest that young adults (25-to 34-year-olds) with more favorable backgrounds benefit from their social origin and occupational environment in terms of nonformal learning participation. It was also found that the participants outperform nonparticipants in the PIAAC problem-solving skill assessment. The key findings of this study advocate for the importance of policy interventions to combat the cumulative effects of multiple disadvantages in the educational trajectory from initial education to adult learning as well as to reduce the problem-solving skill gaps of young disadvantaged adults.

POVZETEK V prispevku najprej analiziramo vlogo in pomen izobraževanja in usposabljanja starejših delavcev z vidika učinkov na delovnem mestu. Učinki oz. vplivi izobraževanja in usposabljanja (starejših) delavcev se kažejo na različnih ravneh pojavnosti, in sicer kot znanje, spretnosti, vrednote, vedenje posameznikov, po drugi strani pa se učinki kažejo tudi na organizacijski ravni. V prispevku analiziramo podatke raz-iskave PIAAC, pri čemer izhajamo iz teze, da so starejši delavci v primerjavi z mlajšimi diskriminirani pri dostopu do izobraževanja in usposabljanja, povezanega z zaposlitvijo oz. delom. Ugotovitve analize predpostavke potrjujejo. Ključne besede: staranje delovne sile, zaposlenost starejših delavcev, spretnosti starejših delavcev, po-men izobraževanja in usposabljanja starejših delavcev THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF OLDER WORKERS – INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON-ABSTRACT In this paper, we first analyse the role and meaning of the education and training of older workers in the workplace from the perspective of their effects. These manifest on different levels: on the one hand, they are recognisable as the knowledge, skills, values, and behaviour of individuals, but, on the other hand, their influences are also present on the organisational level. In this paper, we analyse data gathered via PIAAC research; analyses are based on the hypothesis that older workers, in comparison to younger age groups, are discriminated against as regards access to education and training related to employment or work. The analyses confirm our hypothesis. Keywords: an ageing workforce, employment of older workers, skills of older workers, meaning of education, older workers learning

Only few previous studies have explored cross-national variation in the relationship between educational certificates and competences. In this paper, we investigate the cer- tificate-competence relationship, operationalized as skills gaps by level of educational attainment. More importantly, we scrutinize how two aspects of educational stratifica- tion processes, vertical stratification and occupation-specificity, affects skills gaps. Us- ing data on 25-54 year olds from the 2011/12 round of the Programme for the Interna- tional Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), we find that more occupation-specific education systems produce smaller differences in basic general skills between adults with low and intermediate levels of education. Higher levels of vertical stratification, by contrast, result in larger low-intermediate skills gaps. None of the two stratification aspects can however explain variations in the skills gaps between intermediate and high educated adults. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for labor market research.

Skills  are  at  the  core  of  improving  individuals’  employment  outcomes  and  increasing  countries productivity  and  growth, while  ensuring  social  cohesiveness. In  this  paper,  we  look  into  the  current
levels  and  distribution  of literacy skills  in  the  working-age  population  of  11  EU  Member  States,  and
examine how the population gains, loses or preserves cognitive skills over time. The empirical analysis is based  on  a representative sample of adult age population, built  merging  the  two  main surveys measuring individual  cognitive  skills, the 1994-1998  International  Adult  Literacy  Survey  (IALS)  and  the 2012  Survey  on  Adult  Skills  (PIAAC). Findings reveal that countries not only differ in average values of skills but also in their distribution, i.e. in the share of high and low achievers. Moreover, the paper shows that a process of deterioration of skills over time is at work in almost all European countries. However, while skill deterioration due to ageing is common to almost  all  European  countries,  for some of them concerns arise for the occurrence of skill deterioration due to cohort effect, which has important policy implications. Indeed, the loss of skills between generations may potentially lead to some inequalities in the set of opportunities that different generations can enjoy, but also –and more directly linked to the whole aim of this research– has serious implications for the successful integration of individuals in the economic sector.

Paper presented to XXX National Conference of Labour Economics (Cagliari, 17-18 September 2015)
see http://www.aiel.it/page/profVisibile.php?id=121

Skills are at the core of improving individuals’ socio-economic  outcomes  while  increasing countries  productivity,  growth  and  social  cohesiveness.  Thus,  it  comes  as  no  surprise  that understanding how they evolve over time and what drivers can be behind their evolution have become  a  policy  priority  among  European  countries  and  the  European  Commission.  Using the 1994-1998  International  Adult  Literacy  Survey  (IALS)  and  the  2012  Survey  on  Adult
Skills (PIAAC) we build synthetic cohorts to disentangle ageing and cohort effects affecting the  literacy  skills  endowment  of  the  population  of  10  EU  countries.  Interesting, results
indicate  declining  literacy  skills  with  age,  but  more  worrying,  they  also  show  that  a  large number  of  EU  countries  are  currently  facing  a  severe  problem  of  decreasing  skills  for  more recent generations, especially among the low educated.

The human capital of the working age population has in the past shown to be a key driver not only of economic growth and poverty reduction but also of health, quality of institutions, and adaptive capacity to environmental change. Human capital has mostly been measured in terms of mean years of schooling of the population or the highest educational attainment distribution. But in recent years the attention has shifted to trying to also measure the quality of education in terms of the skills acquired. While much empirical information already exists on the tests of skills of school age children, the situation is not as good with respect to globally comparable data on adult skills. However, what matters for the multiple benefits of human capital is the skill level of adults of working age rather than the skill level of school age children. While the skills of the school-age population are sometimes used as a proxy for that of the adult population, the two can differ widely, particularl...

This chapter provides readers with a step-by-step guide to performing both simple and complex analyses with data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) using the IEA International Database (IDB) Analyzer. The IDB Analyzer is a Windows-based tool that generates SPSS and SAS syntax. Using this syntax, corresponding analyses can be conducted in SPSS and SAS. The chapter presents the data-merging module and the analysis module. Potential analyses with the IDB Analyzer are demonstrated-for example, the calculation of percentages, averages, proficiency levels, linear regression, correlations, and percentiles. This chapter describes the general use of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) International Database Analyzer (IDB Analyzer) for analysing PIAAC data (IEA 2019). The IDB Analyzer provides a user-friendly interface to easily merge the data files of the different countries participating in PIAAC. Furthermore, it seamlessly takes into account the sampling information and the multiple imputed achievement scores to produce accurate statistical results (see Chap. 2 in this volume for details about PIAAC's complex sample and assessment design). This chapter is subdivided into three main sections. In the first section, we will provide a brief overview of the software. 1 Sections 6.2 and 6.3 will be dedicated 1 Most of the information for this section is adapted from the last version of the Help Manual for the IDB analyzer (IEA 2019).

New blog published in NORRAG, online version here:  https://www.norrag.org/tina-comes-to-european-education-the-european-commission-pisa-piaac-and-american-style-knowledge-capital-theory-by-hikaru-komatsu-and-jeremy-rappleye/

Directly connected to this more recent work by the OECD:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/focus-on-low-performing-students-will-add-63t-to-turkish-economy/1906975

Skills are core elements of the socio-economic prospects of individuals, while they also improve national productivity, growth and social cohesion. Understanding how skills evolve over time and what drives their evolution has become a policy priority of many European countries. Using the 1994-1998 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and the 2012 Survey on Adult Skills (PIAAC) we build synthetic cohorts and examine how the population gains, loses or preserves cognitive skills (literacy) over time. While, as expected, deterioration in the level of skills due to ageing is common to almost all the European countries studied, for some of them concerns arise for the occurrence of skill deterioration across generations, especially among less well-educated and medium-educated individuals. Certain countries appear to be doing a poorer job in providing the necessary literacy skills over successive generations.

Education is increasingly seen as a substitute for social policy, but opportunities for skill development vary by social background and educational institutions are not neutral in this respect. While previous research has extensively examined how schooling affects skills distribution, the role of post-compulsory education has been long overlooked. Using data from the 2011/2012 Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competences, this article investigates how selected features of upper secondary and tertiary education are connected to the social stratification of young adults’ literacy skills in 18 OECD countries. First, I use individual-level regressions to assess the extent to which disparities in the skills of 24- to 29-year-old individuals are explained by parental education in each country. Second, I apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis across countries to investigate under which institutional conditions the social stratification of young adults’ literacy skills is most severe. The findings point to the existence of functionally equivalent education regimes: young adults face severe disparities not only in socially selective higher education systems but also in relatively open systems characterized by institutional differentiation; moreover, disparities arising during compulsory schooling are consequential for the skill distribution of young adults, underscoring the importance of a life-course approach to education policies.

WKuasrzisztudsearmMmenesnchf?asWsiuensgollte der Mensch sein? Und: Was sollte der Mensch warum tun? Menschenbilder können Ergebnis oder Hypothese eines Forschungsprozesses sein. Sie können axbxexr auch als unhinterfragte, quasi selbstverständliche Annahme am Beginn eines Forschungs- prozesses und damit einer Beweiskette stehen, ohne je bewusst einer Reflexion unterzogen worden zu sein. Dieser Beitrag rekonstruiert das Menschenbild von PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) mittels einer Dokumentenanalyse der wich- tigsten öffentlichen Strategiepapiere, die die OECD in der Planungsphase der Studie bis 2005 herausgegeben hat. Schlussfolgerung der Autorin ist, dass das Menschenbild, das der PIAAC-Studie zugrunde liegt, den Wirtschaftsmenschen (Homo oeconomicus) in den Mittel- punkt stellt. Er/sie soll sich, idealerweise lebenslang lernend, die definierten Kompetenzen aneignen und diese bis in ein hohes Lebensalter erhalten. Bildung ist diesem Menschenbild zufolge nicht im klassischen Sinne ein Wert an sich. Vielmehr wird mit Bildung ein ökonomi- scher Nutzen auf individueller und gesellschaftlicher Ebene verbunden. (Red.)

This chapter investigates the factors associated with the level of digital skills of the Polish working age (16-65 years of age) population. It uses the 2012 OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies  (PIAAC) survey, which used direct measures of digital skills. Ordinary least-squares regression is used as the method of analysis. The results show that older age, lower education, less skilled occupation, being a woman, and lower income are associated with lower levels of digital skills. Public sector workers are slightly less digitally skilled than private sector employees, but otherwise the highly precarious Polish labour market is not bifurcated in terms of digital skills. While the size of the respondent's household library predicts the level of digital skills, the level of education of the respondent's parents does not. Following such results, this chapter discusses policy recommendations and offers suggestions for future digital inequality research.
Keywords: digital divide, digital inequality, adults, Poland, PIAAC.

Analyzing information from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this paper explores the frequency with which adults engage in reading, writing and numeracy practices and the relationship between these practices and a range of social and economic outcomes. Results are examined for the general adult populations as well as adult populations with low literacy or numeracy proficiencies. For most social and economic outcomes, levels of engagement in literacy practices appear to be as strong predictors as proficiency measures are, indicating the importance of encouraging more intense engagement in literacy and numeracy practices both in and outside of work. ADULTS’ ENGAGEMENT IN READING, WRITING AND NUMERACY PRACTICES This paper focuses on adults’ uses of reading, writing and numeracy skills both at work and outside of work. Although previous international surveys of adult literacy such as the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALLS) included some questions about such skill use, the Surv...

This chapter investigates whether factors identified by the European Union as potential sources of digital exclusion increase the risk of not having or having insufficient skills to use effectively Information and Communication Technologies among people in Poland who are 26–65 years old. The author also analyses whether digital skills inequality among adult Poles is differentiated geographically at the voivodeship level. The paper uses data from the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) study and multilevel logistic regression with a random intercept and fixed slopes as a method of investigation. It concludes with four policy recommendations.

Analyzing information from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this paper explores the frequency with which adults engage in reading, writing and numeracy practices and the relationship between these practices and a range of social and economic outcomes. Results are examined for the general adult populations as well as adult populations with low literacy or numeracy proficiencies. For most social and economic outcomes, levels of engagement in literacy practices appear to be as strong predictors as proficiency measures are, indicating the importance of encouraging more intense engagement in literacy and numeracy practices both in and outside of work. ADULTS’ ENGAGEMENT IN READING, WRITING AND NUMERACY PRACTICES This paper focuses on adults’ uses of reading, writing and numeracy skills both at work and outside of work. Although previous international surveys of adult literacy such as the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALLS) included some questions about such skill use, the Surv...

This article is excerpted (with slight adaptations) from the reports Using the PIAAC Literacy Framework to Guide Instruction: An Introduction for Adult Educators (Trawick, 2017) and Bringing Reading Instruction to Life: Supplement to the Introductory Guide (Trawick, 2018). The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) conducted an international literacy assessment for adults in 2012 and 2014, and this article describes how adult educators can use its literacy framework to frame instruction as well. Key aspects that can guide teaching and learning include a “literacy-in-use” orientation to reading, the definition for “literacy” adopted by the literacy expert group, and how PIAAC operationalized Context, Content, and Cognitive Strategies. A model of contextualized
reading instruction is proposed as a way to organize reading instruction.

Data for what? Converging and diverging trajectories of Large Scale Assessment in Education: OECD versus IEA

Author(s):Orazio Giancola (presenting), Assunta Viteritti

Conference:ECER 2016, Leading Education: The Distinct Contributions of Educational Research and Researchers

Network:28. Sociologies of Education
Format:Paper

28 SES 04, Data and Policies in the Fabrication of the European Space of Education
Paper Session
Time:2016-08-24
09:00-10:30

Na přelomu let 2011/2012 se v  České republice uskutečnil mezinárodní výzkum vědomostí a dovedností dospělých dospělých PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). Výzkum koordinovala
Organizace pro hospodářskou spolupráci a rozvoj a v ČR byl jeho realizací pověřen nejprve Ústav pro informace vzdělávání a později Dům zahraniční spolupráce. Jeho realizace byla hrazena z  projektu OPVK Kompetence II. Cílem této publikace je seznámit čtenáře se základními poznatky z výzkumu. Publikace je členěna do dvou částí. První část, kterou zpracovali editoři této publikace, představuje českým čtenářům hlavní výsledky mezinárodního srovnání tak, jak jsou uvedeny v  mezinárodní publikaci prvních výsledků OECD Skills Outlook 2013. Firts results results from the Survey of Adult Skills, a uvádí některé detailnější deskriptivní informace o výsledcích české populace. Druhá část sestávající z autorských kapitol poskytuje podrobnější pohled na souvislosti mezi kompetencemi a vybranými dalšími faktory v národním kontextu.

The aim of this paper is to report on part of an investigation into an online assessment of adult competencies called Education and Skills Online (ESonline). This assessment tool is designed to generate data about cognitive skills in three domains:
Literacy
Numeracy
(IT skills)

As well as non-cognitive skills:
How skills are used
Career interest
Health and well-being

The psychometric instrument used to produce these measures is based directly on the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The PIAAC is an International Large Scale Assessment (ILSA) run by the OECD since 2013 with the express aim of giving national governments data about the ‘skills’ or ‘competencies’ present in their adult populations (16-60) much in the same way that the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) claims to do for school- age children. Although PIAAC is in a direct extension of the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL) and the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), it is the first ever ILSA to be produce all of its data digitally.

ESonline however, differs from PIAAC in one but very significant way. ESonline provides individual-level results. Although ILSAs such as PIAAC or PISA have always derived data from answers to test or survey items from individuals, these data have never been linked to an individual and always reported at a national level and have been used almost exclusively for non-commercial or policy-making ends. ESonline moves into the for-profit sector and targets potential clients in universities, Vocational Education and Training (VET) centers and companies ‘that want to use the results to help them identify the training needs related to literacy and numeracy for their workforce’ (OECD, 2015, p. 1) or students.

Overeducation is generally seen as critical for both the society, since it implies a waste of skills (CEDEFOP 2010; McGuinness 2006), and the individual, since it is associated with negative labor market outcomes (Allen & van der Velden 2001; Hartog 2000); yet, in times of economic downturns, working in a job for which one is overqualified might be the lesser of two evils (Pedulla 2016; Voßemer & Schuck 2016).
Early overeducation studies have focused on micro- and meso-level determinants within single-country frameworks. Recent cross-country comparisons investigate the role of labor markets and educational systems (Allen et al. 2013; Levels et al. 2014). However, the endurance of the current economic crisis, with its heterogeneous repercussions across European countries, challenges cross-country overeducation studies.
This paper investigates the link between overeducation incidence and economic conditions by explicitly considering cross-sectional overeducation rates as the result of labor market dynamics over a long time span, starting from the moment when the individual with the longest job tenure at the time of observation was hired.
We analyze data from the 2011/12 round of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) for prime-age workers (35-to-55-year-old) in 16 European countries. The direct measures of general skills available in PIAAC allow us to disentangle ‘apparent’ overeducation (resulting from individuals having higher qualifications than their skills would suggest) from ‘real’ overeducation (signaling an actual job mismatch). This is particularly important in international comparisons because the association between qualifications and skills―hence, skills heterogeneity within qualification levels―has been shown to vary substantially across countries (Heisig & Solga 2014).
Our results, based on mixed-effects linear-probability models, indicate that overeducation is partly explained by a lack of skills in all countries studied; however, workers’ skill heterogeneity is not responsible for cross-country country variation in overeducation rates. Moreover, our findings suggest that ‘real’ overeducation is influenced by the current economic downturn, as: (i) individuals who experienced job mobility after the outbreak of the 2007 financial crisis are more likely to be overeducated than those who stayed in their jobs; (ii) overeducation is more pronounced in labor markets with higher shares of not-employed adults.

Occupational mismatch has been a hot topic in the economics literature in recent decades; however, no consensus has been reached on how to conceptualise and measure this phenomenon. We explore the unique opportunity offered by the PIAAC survey to measure occupational mismatch at the individual level based on both education- (overeducation) and skill-based (overskilling) variables by using both objective and subjective measures. For this purpose, we use data on 17 European countries and compute up to 20 different indicators of occupational mismatch. We find that the conceptualisation and measurement of occupational mismatch are indeed important and that education and skill mismatch do not measure the same phenomenon. In fact, only a small percentage of mismatched individuals are mismatched with respect to both education and skill, whereas the majority are mismatched with respect to either education or skill only. At the country level, we find a negative correlation between the incidence of education and skill mismatch, which has important implications for policies aiming to address this labour market inefficiency.

In stratification studies, the ambivalent role of education – able to enhance social mobility, but also to legitimize intergenerational inequalities – is well established. Empirical evidence indicates that the extent to which social origins influence educational attainment varies across countries. In recent years, the availability of internationally comparable measures of cognitive skills has made systematic comparisons of education systems and their effects possible. Many studies have investigated the institutional determinants of skill stratification during compulsory schooling, finding that, for instance, family background effects are particularly strong in systems that track students into differentiated curricula at early age. Instead, due to a lack of comparable data, the social stratification of skills after compulsory schooling has been long overlooked. However, given the nearly universal nature of primary and secondary schooling and the expansion of tertiary education, this is a topic of high relevance for stratification research. In this paper, I analyze social inequalities in literacy skills of young adults in 18 OECD countries, using internationally comparable data collected by the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) in 2012. I adopt a mixed-methods, two-step analytical strategy. In a first step, by means of individual-level, within-country regressions, I assess the degree to which family background affects the current level of literacy skills of 24- to 29-year-old individuals in each country. The association of family background and skills becomes the explanandum in the second step of analysis, where I address the question of which kinds of educational systems produce the most unequal outcomes. Since educational systems can be conceived as complex entities of interconnected elements, in this second step I rely on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis as a method particularly apt at detecting complex causality patterns. The results suggest that different institutional configurations can bring about similarly unequal outcomes: when literacy skills are important for the social position of individuals, their unequal distribution can be the product of carry-over effects from previous stratification during compulsory schooling or – when skills were not previously stratified – from unequal opportunities of access to tertiary education. However, even in presence of a tertiary education system with equal access opportunities, the literacy skills of young adults can be stratified when tertiary education institutions are strongly differentiated.