These findings raise many questions. What types of learners are most likely to experience wage gains? What difference does the type of learning make? Does the type of workplace a learner works in make a difference? Unfortunately the SLID survey does not collect detailed information on the types of learning that individuals participate in. Moreover, the sample of individual with high-school or less education who engage in adult learning is quite small. Therefore it is difficult to conduct analyses that include a large number of contextual variables.

A recent paper by Myers and Myles (2005) aims to address some of the questions raised by the Statistics Canada paper by analyzing data from two large-scale cross sectional Canadian surveys on adult education. The first data source, the National Survey on the Changing Nature of Work and Life-long Learning (WALL) was conducted in early 2004 with a large representative national sample of the adult Canadian population. The second source, the Adult Education and Training Survey (AETS) conducted by Statistics Canada, is Canada’s most comprehensive source of data on formal adult education and training. Because these surveys are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal, Myers and Myles (2005) were not able to assess the longer-term outcomes of adult learning experiences. However, they were able to provide a rich body of data on the consequences that adult learners attribute to their experiences. Most importantly, they were also able to identify a number of other structural factors that influence the relationship between initial education level and learning experiences later in life.

Echoing the results of Zhang and Palameta (2006), they found that respondents with an initial education of high-school or less were actually more likely than their more educated counterparts to report that a learning episode helped them achieve a positive labour market outcome. (Their analysis was based on the responses to three questions in which respondents were asked whether the education or training received was very helpful, fairly helpful or not helpful for (a) increasing their income; (b) gaining a promotion; and (c) changing jobs.) This relationship held even after accounting for differences in the type and quantity of the training received as well as the respondent’s job and workplace characteristics. In fact, once these differences were accounted for, less-educated learners were even more likely to report that training was helpful.