Education in ageing societies: To which extent do welfare states influence enrolment later in life?

The promotion of education later in life has become a key issue in policy discourses, both with regard to strengthening economic competitiveness and to reducing social inequalities in a context of aging societies. However, country differences in participation patterns are less understood yet. The majority of available analysis are single country studies and focus only on individual factors influencing enrolment, while country-specific factors are barely taken into account. We contribute to this research area by offering a more comprehensive overview about different determinants of education later in life. Firstly, we distinguish between four different adult education activities and can therefore offer a more detailed distinction of education later in life. Secondly, we examine up to 26 European countries, and thus include more cases than most papers have done before, with the most recent data available on this topic, the European Adult Education Survey from 2007. Thirdly, we apply multilevel analysis to test for each of the four adult education activities separately theoretically important country-specific determinants that are welfare, labour market and educational characteristics as well as economic indicators.