EFFECTS OF LIFELONG EDUCATION AND RELATED FACTORS ON THE COMPETITIVENESS OF COUNTRIES

Abstract

Modern knowledge becomes a strategic endowment of the country and its key resource for economic growth, giving individuals opportunities to become active employers or increasing their opportunities to become professionals being demanded in the labour market. For these reasons, the development of lifelong education is a significant tool for economic growth in Latvia. Correlation and linear regression analyses showed that lifelong education made the strongest and most positive effects on a country’s competitiveness at two stages of economic development: at the innovation-driven stage and during a country’s transition to it from the efficiency-driven stage (the case of Latvia). Calculations were preformed based on the data for 2008 and 2013, and the results were similar, which indicated the stability of this global causal relationship. So the authors conclude that a country’s stage of economic development plays a crucial role in the extent the factor of lifelong education can affect the country’s global competitiveness. In the countries being at lower stages of economic development, even well-developed lifelong education is not objectively capable of increasing their competiveness as effectively as it takes place, for example, at the innovation-driven stage. Proving a causal relationship – the capability of lifelong education to increase a country’s competitiveness is determined by the existing economic background and rules of game, which are different at different stages of economic development – based on research of the economic aspects of lifelong education may be regarded as the key gain of the present research.