This argument is based on three main assumptions. First, it is believed that one's income and occupational status depend on one's productivity as a worker, which in turn is a function of one's personal stock of "human capital", including basic education, job skills, work-relevant attitudes, etc. 36 Therefore, it is concluded that those with inadequate basic education will tend to disproportionately experience unemployment, underemployment and poverty. 37 A Canadian specialist on adult illiteracy argues:

Income levels - particularly the distribution of income among employed persons - depend upon the distribution of the work force among the various occupational groups which, in turn, is determined by the educational level of the available labor force. Illiteracy levels of a population supply an important segment of the educational status. An illiterate person is scarcely fit for even the most menial occupational role, therefore, the illiterates and the poorly educated constitute an unemployable segment of the work force 38

The second main assumption of the liberal perspective on illiteracy is that the application of increasingly sophisticated technology in business and industry is responsible for what has been a rapid rise in educational requirements for jobs since the late 1950's. 39 Based on this, and recalling the first assumption, it is concluded that the persistent poverty and unemployment of the 1960's and beyond has to a large degree resulted from the increasing erosion of the productivities of undereducated adults in the face of technological advance. In a report prepared for Labour Canada, another expert on adult illiteracy, Gary Dickenson, writes:

As a society progresses, the educational requirement imposed on its members also advances so that a given level of educational achievement at one moment in history is not adequate at another. The more rapid the rate of technological change the more quickly the minimal level of educational achievement rises. In Canada, technological and the related social changes have increased the need for a more highly educated work force thus limiting employment for those in the population who are undereducated. At the moment, one third of the population of Canada 15 years of age and over can be classified as undereducated and therefore its employability is marginal 40

The third main assumption is that under education arises from, and in turn feeds into, a self-perpetuating "culture of poverty." Adherents of the liberal perspective believe that while "imperfections" in the economic system (e.g. racial discrimination in employment, and insufficient job opportunities and inequalities in spending for public services and education) play a significant role in the initial creation of poverty, they argue that the poor in turn proceed to reject the larger society, its values and its life-styles and form a distinctive, self-contained and self-perpetuating "culture of poverty" which becomes a major cause of poverty in and of itself. 41 In their influential 1970 study entitled Adult Education and the Disadvantaged Adult, Canadian adult educators Anderson and Niemi state: