Cross-country Comparison of Factors Determining Difference in Possession of Competences of Employed and Unemployed

This study devoted to analysis of the factors determining the difference in the possession of competences among the unemployed and employed in different countries. From the one hand, we can assume that unemployed possess competences worse than employed people, because of their social status, but, from the other hand, the causes of this diversity lays in the differences between countries, such as rate of unemployment or types of educational system etc. This lack of study of the differences of possession of competences between groups lead to our research questions: How big is the difference in possession of competences in different countries? what factors may determine the difference? The study will be conducted on the survey data of PIAAC (first wave, 2013). This work is divided into two chapters. The first chapter is devoted to the theoretical analysis of our theme, in this part we analyze the previous empirical studies on the difference in the possession of competences, then we formulate a hypothesis for our research and examine our basic concepts. The second chapter of our work is entirely devoted to the analysis of the factors determining the difference in the possession of competences between the unemployed and working people, we will analyze how factors influence on the difference in the possession of competences. As main results, we have received a number of factors that affect possession of competences. Such factors as type of educational system, share of women and people with higher education among unemployed affect on difference in possession of literacy and numeracy for all countries. Other variables do not show linear connection for all countries, but sub-groups analysis showed different connection between possession of competences and rate of unemployment and share of women and people with higher education among employed people.