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HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON
In cases where cost-sharing creates the need for active partnerships, many
issues arise other than financial ones. Governments need to review their
strategies in building up the effectiveness of partnership ventures, and consider
how they can play supportive roles when they are not the lead partner.
iii) Optimal allocation of scarce resources in relation to the costs
and benefits of alternative investments
Returns are unequal across Evidence on rates of return shows that a dollar of investment will not always
levels of initial education produce the same amount of human capital, however measured. Existing
and different learning indicators are far from perfect, but they nevertheless provoke salient questions.
environments. For example, the high individual gains associated with participation in tertiary
education, when set against their high costs and forgone earnings, do not
necessarily yield the highest returns. Initial calculations indicate that individual
and social rates of return are frequently inferior to those associated with
completing upper secondary education (such calculations are, however, based
only on readily-quantified variables). Neither is it clear why some countries
spend over three times as much per student in tertiary education than in primary
education, whereas others spend about the same. The rationale for such patterns
needs to be made clearer, and linked to analysis of benefits.
Market failure may lead It is also important to look carefully at both the costs and benefits of
to under-investment by supporting various forms of work-related training. There is by no means clear
companies in work-based evidence that active labour market programmes always provide good value
training. overall, although there is greater evidence of benefits for individuals than
there is evidence of social benefits. In considering wider support for
enterprise-based training, policies should consider what is best left to the
market and where there is market failure in the form of under-investment.
The latter may occur, for example, because firms are unwilling to train people
who may quit their jobs in a highly mobile workforce. However, general
subsidies or training levies are not guaranteed to provide the skills that are
most needed. Direct measurement of worker competences through literacy
and life-skills surveys can give progressively better information about where
the most important deficits lie. This reinforces the challenge to governments
to structure support for job-related training in ways that are designed to
enhance particular skills.
iv) An equitable distribution of investment
Greater equity of access The evidence shows that neither the stock of human capital nor the
and use of skills constitutes pattern of investment is well distributed among the adult workforce. There is
a major policy challenge. a strong tendency for those with high knowledge, skills and competences to
be those who acquire more, widening existing gaps. Considerations of equity
in access to training and use of skills, not just in relation to initial education,
but also in relation to the continuing investment in human capital over the
life-cycle, are important. Labour market programmes targeted at the
unemployed make a contribution. However, the distribution of other work-
related training, whether sponsored by companies or by individuals, serves
strongly to reinforce the inequalities created by initial education. An adult
with tertiary education is more than twice as likely on average to participate
in training during a twelve-month period than one who has not completed
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secondary school. While this is true within countries, however, it is significant
HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT: POLICY ISSUES AND QUESTIONS
that the least-educated adults in some countries train more frequently than
the most-educated ones in others. So, low participation among the least-
educated is not inevitable. In their partnerships with enterprises, governments
will need to consider what instruments and incentives might help to achieve
a better distribution.
v) Monitoring, measuring and accounting
The information base on human capital is inadequate not just from the Better accounting for human
point of view of policy makers but also in relation to the needs of private capital as an investment
individuals and enterprises. Markets need good information to work well. can provide better signals
Governments cannot exercise sole control over such information, but may be to governments, businesses
in a position to improve the available signals. One way might be to reform and individuals.
national accounting systems to reflect more accurately the importance and
strategic role of human capital investments within learning economies ; another
is to encourage enterprises to revise their own accounting systems. If worker
training were included as an investment rather than a current cost, and the
competence of the workforce were reflected in companies asset values, the
incentive to invest would be changed.
There is considerable scope for building on what is known about human
capital stocks, investments and returns. This may be achieved in particular,
through developing indicators of where the most serious shortfalls in stock occur,
and of the relationship between the cost of investing in these areas and the
resulting benefits. The measures and monitoring should address the following
framework of issues: levels of human capital investment; the nature of, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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