Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures

• 1        Introduction
  • 1.1    The purpose of this paper
  • 1.2    Why look at literacy?
  • 1.3    Review methods
  • 1.4    How the paper is structured
• 2        Literacy skills in New Zealand
  • 2.1    The IALS survey
  • 2.2    Literacy skills at Level 1
  • 2.3    Level 1 and 2 tasks in IALS
  • 2.4    New Zealanders with Level 1 skills
  • 2.5    International comparisons
  • 2.6    Conclusion
• 3        An introduction to the economic effects of increased literacy
  • 3.1    Country-level studies
  • 3.2    Individual-level studies
  • 3.3    Firm-level studies
  • 3.4    Analyses of trends in skill requirements
  • 3.5    The following chapters
• 4        Macroeconomic studies of aggregate returns to literacy skills
  • 4.1    Cross-country growth studies
  • 4.2    Literacy in cross-country regressions
  • 4.3    Conclusion
• 5        Individual returns to literacy skills
  • 5.1    Introduction
  • 5.2    Literacy and earnings
  • 5.3    Literacy and employment
  • 5.4    A note about birth cohort studies
  • 5.5    Conclusion
• 6        Impact of literacy programmes
  • 6.1    Introduction
  • 6.2    Employment-related training programmes
  • 6.3    Workplace literacy programmes
  • 6.4    Community and family literacy programmes
  • 6.5    Conclusion
• 7        Discussion

• References
• Appendix 1 – Studies of literacy, earnings and employment
• Appendix 2 – Studies of literacy training programmes