Training and Well-being of Working Adults in Russia

• In Event: Adult education: practice, theory, and debate

Proposal

The role of education in individual success is growing, alongside the importance of education for wider societal outcomes, such as health, social solidarity, democratic participation and sustainability. While the human capital research generally ignores the value of education outside of work, other scholars identify benefits of learning besides increased labour productivity (Wolfe and Haveman 2002; Hammond 2004). These benefits include the impact of education on personal health, self-esteem and and self-efficacy (Dench and Regan 1999; Jenkins and Mostafa 2015). Following Ross and Mirowsky, the learning process raises self- confidence and self-esteem, even if the studied material has no direct practical applications (2012: 383).
Individuals can participate in learning in various contexts – at work, in educational settings and in leisure contexts. Education helps the graduates to get more attractive jobs that offer opportunities for skills development and high remuneration (Thurow 1975, 1996). The position in the labor market largely defines how individuals upgrade their skills and their wages. Income, material conditions and access to training have a direct effect on well-being. In addition, they affect individual well-being indirectly, through exposure to stress, access to high-quality health care, and the availability of other coping resources.
The study by Jenkins and Mostafa (2015) investigated the impact of various types of adult leaning on well-being and found that informal types of learning are associated with higher well-being of older adults, whereas formal training did not have any significant effect. Still, there is not enough evidence on the effect of formal work-related training on well-being in the research literature.
The study draws on the nationally representative sample provided by the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey – Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) to address the question: does job-related training has a positive impact on well-being of working adults in Russia over a two year period?
Hypothesis 1. Job-related training will be associated with higher levels of well-being of younger workers, above the effect of wages.
Hypothesis 2. The more qualified workers may be more likely to continue with learning participation later in life. We consider the interaction between prior education level (which is a proxy for higher ability level), and participation in job-related training.
The transitional character of Russian economy and society makes it an especially interesting case for analysis. On the one hand, economic hardships lower a person’s capacity to assure her needs and the needs of her family, which has a negative impact on self-esteem, health and the perception of controlling life outcomes (Pearlin et al. 1981). In Russia, it is the wealthiest strata of the population that tend to be marked by personality traits related to self-esteem. Over half (60%) of respondents in a study of the Russian Academy of Sciences of middle class individuals living in urban areas agreed that their life outcomes depend, in the final account, on their own efforts (Mareeva and Tikhonova 2016: 103). These indicators are lower among more vulnerable strata of the population such as retired persons (Ibid.). On the other hand, in a growing economy, individual returns to education and training remain high (Travkin and Sharunina 2016; Gimpelson and Kapeliushnikov 2017).
The RLMS sample used in this study represents the Russian population. The purpose sample presents information on individuals between the ages of 20 and 65, including their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, including wages, types of dwelling, marital status, information about formal education and participation in job-related training. The data on well-being were collected in the questions about life satisfaction and self-concept. In addition, the data on personal mastery and self-rated health was included in the analysis. The regression models were run to estimate the effects of training on various aspect of subjective well-being mentioned above. The analysis was run on the subsamples for men and women representing different age groups.
The preliminary results show that the effects of training on mastery are especially high for women in older and middle ages. As it has been shown for formal education in previous studies, it may be that education contributes to both skills and productivity increase of male and female workers, and this affects their wages, but in case of women, it also reduces the negative effects of discrimination, tastes and circumstances (Dougherty 2005). The effects on life satisfaction were insignificant and on self-rated health - negative and significant. This corresponds to the findings from previous studies which showed the negative effects of training on well-being of women in the societies where traditional beleifs about gender roles prevail.
References (selected):
Becker, Gary S. 1962. “Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis.” Journal of Political Economy 70 (Suppl., October): 9–49.
Hammond C. 2004. Impacts of Lifelong Learning upon Emotional Resilience, Psychological and Mental Health:Fieldwork Evidence. Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Dec., 2004), pp. 551-568.
Gimpelson V. E., Kapeliushnikov R. Age and Education in the Russian Labour Market Equation. Institute for the Study of Labor. Series IZA DP "Discussion Paper". 2017. No. 11126.
Jenkins A. and T. Mostafa. 2015. The effects of learning on wellbeing for older adults in England. Ageing & Society 35: 2053-2070.
Travkin, P. and A. Sharunina The returns to training in Russia: a difference-in-differences analysis. International Journal of Training and Development 20:4.
Ross, C. E. and J. Mirowsky (1999) Refining the association between education and effects of quantity, credential, and selectivity, Demography, selectivity, Demography/ 36(4): 445-460.
Wolfe, B. and R.Haveman (2002). Social and nonmarket benefits from education in an advanced economy. Conference Series 47 (Proceedings).
Dougherty C. 2005. Why Are the Returns to Schooling Higher for Women than for Men? The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 969-988.

Authors

• Natalia Karmaeva, Higher School of Economics

• Andrei Zakharov, National Research University Higher School of Economics