Skills that Matter for Success and Well‑being in Adulthood

Executive Summary

The Survey of Adult Skills provides insights into the information-processing skills essential for effective participation in the labour market and society – literacy, numeracy and problem solving. The 2023 cycle expands this scope by including measures of social and emotional skills: agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion and openness to new experiences. This broader approach enables policymakers, researchers and educators to understand how cognitive and social and emotional skills jointly shape life outcomes. The report explores how both types of skills contribute to employment and social outcomes independently from each other and how social and emotional skills relate to education and the acquisition of key information-processing skills. It also documents how social and emotional skills are distributed across the adult population.

Social and emotional skills matter for education and the acquisition of cognitive skills

Data from the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills show that adults’ social and emotional skills are linked to their educational attainment and cognitive proficiency. Among the five domains assessed, openness and emotional stability stand out as consistent, albeit moderate, predictors of educational attainment. These skills likely support autonomous learning and independent thinking, which are particularly valuable in post-secondary education. They are also positively related to proficiency in literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving, above and beyond their impact on formal education. Individuals with high levels of openness use cognitive skills more frequently and are more likely to participate in adult learning, which may contribute to their higher average cognitive proficiency.

In contrast, the associations between educational outcomes and agreeableness, conscientiousness and extraversion are comparatively weaker and more variable across countries, suggesting a stronger sensitivity to contextual factors. These skills may be particularly relevant in early schooling, where following rules, responding to authority and cooperating with peers are more central to academic success.

Beyond cognitive skills, social and emotional skills play a role in shaping adults’ success in work and life

While cognitive skills such as literacy remain key determinants of labour market outcomes, social and emotional skills contribute independently to occupational choices, employment opportunities, wages and job satisfaction. In particular, extraversion and emotional stability show positive associations with employment status and job satisfaction, comparable in magnitude to those of literacy skills. Their associations with wages are weaker, but significantly positive. These skills seem to matter in all countries, while the role of the other social and emotional skills in employment outcomes tend to be more context dependent.

Beyond their relevance for employment, social and emotional skills also play a role in shaping broader aspects of individual and societal well-being. Higher levels of emotional stability and extraversion are consistently related to greater life satisfaction and better health, while openness is positively linked to volunteering and political efficacy – the belief in one’s ability to influence political affairs. These findings highlight the broader value of social and emotional skills for individuals and society.

Social and emotional skills vary across sub-groups of the adult population

Social and emotional skills differ across socio-demographic groups. Some differences, such as gender differences in agreeableness, are observed consistently across all participating countries and economies, suggesting that similar underlying processes may operate across diverse cultural settings. Other differences vary in both magnitude and direction across countries, indicating that historical context and societal norms also shape the manifestation of these skills. The most consistent and pronounced differences are observed between adults with different levels of educational attainment, reflecting both the importance of formal learning environments in shaping social and emotional development and the role of social and emotional skills in accessing and succeeding in higher education.

Differences in social and emotional skills by age, gender, parental education and immigrant background are also systematically observed across countries:

• Younger adults tend to report higher levels of extraversion and openness, while older adults tend to report higher levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness.

• Women report higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness, but lower emotional stability than men in nearly all countries.

• Adults with highly educated parents tend to score higher in openness and extraversion, while adults with lower-educated parents tend to score higher in conscientiousness in the majority of countries.

• In many countries, foreign-born adults report higher levels of openness, agreeableness or conscientiousness than native-born adults.

Policies should support social and emotional learning in adulthood

Persistent socio-demographic differences in social and emotional skills call for targeted interventions. A lifelong-learning, multi-channel approach that embeds social and emotional learning (SEL) into formal education systems, non-formal learning and workplaces can help strengthen these skills in both youth and adulthood and support groups with lower skill levels.

Policy options toward building such a strategy include:

• developing and adopting an adult-centred SEL framework to guide the design of policies and training programmes

• expanding current SEL polices beyond schools by integrating them into post-secondary and vocational education pathways

• expanding and formalising SEL opportunities in non-formal adult learning, for example, by supporting curricula that explicitly targets SEL and introducing micro-credentials that make SEL achievements visible

• providing targeted support for disadvantaged groups, for example, by integrating SEL in early schooling to ensure equal opportunities from the start for all, as well as into language and integration programmes for migrants, active labour-market policies for the unemployed, and adult-education initiatives for the low-qualified

• supporting SEL in the workplace, for example, by making SEL an explicit objective of publicly funded workforce development programmes.