Who Gets Over the Training Hurdle? A Study of the Training Experiences of Young Men and Women in Britain

Using longitudinal data from the British National Child Development Study, this paper examines gender differences in the determinants of work-related training. The analysis covers a crucial decade in the working lives of the 1958 birth cohort of young men and women – the years spanning the ages 23 to 33. Hurdle negative binomial models are used to estimate the number of work-related training events lasting at least three days. This approach takes into account the fact that more than one-half of the men and two-thirds of the women in the sample experienced no work-related training lasting three or more days over the period 1981–91. Our analysis suggests that reliance on work-related training to improve the skills of the work-force will result in an increase in the skills of the already educated, but will not improve the skills of individuals entering the labour market with relatively low levels of education.