A Second Chance? The Labor Market Outcomes of Reforming Access to Adult Education

Developing effective tools to address prime-aged high school dropouts is a key policy question. We leverage high quality Norwegian register data to examine the labour market outcomes of expanding access to adult workers and exploit a large policy reform which greatly enabled access to high school education for adults. Our focus is on women and the results show a large and significant increase in education investments with a strong rise in the rate of college completion, leading to higher earnings, increased employment, and decreased fertility. They also point to an effective policy to reduce the gender earnings gap.