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Prior research mostly focuses on the effect of over-education on happiness, whereas the effect of under-education on happiness has received minimal attention. In addition, no research to date has examined the effect of both over- and under-education on happiness by using a full spectrum of workers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to fill this research gap.

The ordered probit model is estimated to examine the effect of the education–occupation mismatch on happiness based on 2012 survey data from Taiwan.

The results generally indicate that over-education positively affects happiness, whereas under-education has a minimal effect. The effect of the education–occupation mismatch on happiness also varies with different age groups. Specifically, over-education positively affects happiness except for workers aged 42 and above, whereas negative effects of under-education are found only among workers aged between 32 and 42 when their social network is insufficiently extensive. Moreover, a worker’s social network as a non-pecuniary factor, rather than income as a pecuniary factor, is a major channel through which education enhances happiness.

Given the limited and mixed evidence on the relationship between over-education and happiness, this study contributes to the existing literature by examining whether and how the education–occupation mismatch (over- and under-education) affects the happiness of workers both directly and indirectly via pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors. The research issue remains unexplored to date. Addressing such a question should help explain the persistent trend in pursuing higher education in Taiwan, although highly educated people may suffer from unemployment and an education–occupation mismatch.

The peer review history for this paper is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2019-0283

The purpose of this paper is to present the stylised facts of over-education among European graduates over time (1998–2013), paying special attention to the measurement issues.

The authors use two different sources, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012, and the European Union Labour Force Survey 1998–2013, with two different aims. The authors employ the first one to make a detailed analysis of the different forms of measuring over-education and its implications in terms of the result obtained. The analysis of the second one responds to studying the evolution and characteristics of over-education in Europe.

In the first place, the paper provides evidence of the high level of sensitivity of the level of measured over-education to the type of methodology used. Such difference is even higher when the authors focus on skills vs educational mismatch. The work also shows how with all their shortcomings, the measures of over-education used in the analysis point to the existence of convergence in over-education levels among the European countries of the sample (only interrupted by the crisis), in a context of reduction of over-education rates in many countries.

Researchers should be particularly careful when estimating over-education, because of the strong implications in terms of the so different results obtained when choosing between competing methods.

The analysis abounds in the implications of the use of different methodologies of estimating over-education in terms of both size and ranking among European countries. The production of long-run and updated estimates of over-education for a large sample of countries is done using a homogenous database and different estimation methods.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of factors associated with over-education among PhD graduates in Italy.

The investigation is based on recently released data collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics by means of interviews with a large sample of PhD recipients, carried out a few years after they obtained their PhD degree. The author measured the mismatch between the current job and previous PhD studies using two direct subjective evaluations of over-education, which distinguish between the usefulness of the PhD title to get the current job position and to perform the current work activities. Even if the incidence of over-education varies according to the measurement applied, the author found that it is highly widespread among PhD recipients. The econometric analyses are aimed at identifying factors associated with over-education and are based on the standard probit model and the bivariate probit model with sample selection which allows to control for self selection into employment.

The results show that over-education is significantly correlated with: first, a number of PhD-related variables, such as the scientific field of study, having attended courses or visiting periods abroad; second, some job-related characteristics, such as working in the academia or being mainly involved in research-related activities; third, the channel of access to the job; and fourth, residential location.

This paper contributes to the literature focusing on job-education mismatch by providing, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first empirical analysis of over-education among PhD recipients in Italy; moreover, it provides some useful insights to evaluate the professional doctoral graduates in Italy.

To investigate the extent of over‐education for recently arrived tertiary educated male immigrants in order to ascertain if higher educated immigrants face assimilation hurdles in the Australian labour market.

Using immigrant longitudinal data (LSIA), this paper uses the job analysis/objective method of defining over‐education. Also, bivariate probits are used to account for selectivity into employment when studying the determinants of graduate over‐education. The over, required and under‐education (ORU) earnings function is utilised to find the rates of return to education investment.

It is found that English speaking background (ESB) immigrants to have similar rates of over‐education compared to the native born, while only Asian non‐English speaking background (NESB) immigrants see a rise in over‐education after tighter immigration and welfare policies were introduced. Returns to required schooling are substantial, but the penalty for excess years of schooling is large, though consistent with the stylised facts of over‐education.

Short time‐frame (up to five years) only allows for an investigation of initial assimilation.

Using panel data, this paper is the first to study the initial phase of highly educated immigrant assimilation into the Australian labour market from the viewpoint of job matching rather than just employment.

This study aims to focus on the phenomenon of “over-education” characterized by a discrepancy between education provided and the needs of the economy vis-à-vis employment. The study considers this issue with reference to tourism and courses taught in the field. Specifically, the phenomenon of over-education is investigated with reference to university graduates in tourism and their employability in the sector.

The research design draws from secondary data derived from a review of the literature on tourism and education.

The findings point to a need to consider aspects of tourism (field of study and discipline) in destination management. This is to avoid discrepancy at macro and micro levels and at a discipline and industry level. This strategy would also help to ensure synergy between tourism education and the needs of the tourism industry as advocated by the Helix model.

By focussing on over-education, this study shows that Sustainable development goal (SDG) 4, which relates to quality education, may be addressed. The outcome of the study also leads to the conclusion that SDG 4 should be based on not only access to education and school enrolment rates at all levels, particularly for girls, but also the relationship between education and actual employment.

This study conducts a comparative analysis of the impact of educational mismatch on Spanish wages. This paper aims to focus on the industrial, construction and service sectors at three levels of disaggregation: sector, occupation and gender.

The over-education, required education and under-education (ORU model), was applied to data from the 2018 Spanish Wages Structure Survey conducted by the Spanish National Statistics Institute.

The industrial sector is the one that best manages over-education by offering the highest returns to each year of over-education. It is also the sector that most values the education of women, particularly those in highly qualified positions.

This study compares the wage effects of educational mismatch in the service, industry and construction sectors. Previous literature has ignored the latter sectors in this field of study, but the results of the present study show that the industrial sectors significantly value and remunerates worker education. Therefore, it may be worthy to focus certain economic and social policies on this sector, to contribute to reducing gender wage gaps and gender employment discrimination in the economy.

For the total population there is evidence of substantial over‐education in the sense that workers possess higher qualifications than are strictly required for the job. Using the fourth wave of the British National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, this paper attempts to ascertain whether ethnic minorities suffer from higher over‐education than whites due to possible discrimination. The results suggest a differential effect across various ethnic groups and a tendency for foreign qualifications to be rewarded less.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the incidence and determinants of educational mismatch in the Indian labour market. It also attempts to measure the wage effects of educational mismatch, and other individual and work-related characteristics.

Educational mismatch is modelled using multiple Mincerian equations. Wage effects are measured using the novel identification strategy of Lewbel (2012), which constructs internal instruments to obviate potential endogeneity problems.

The authors find that the returns to over-education are positive and significant, while the returns to under-education are negative and significant. However, over-educated would earn less than the workers who have the same educational level, but who are engaged in occupations for which they are adequately educated.

This study is one of the earliest attempts to identify the determinants of educational mismatch in the Indian labour market. Additionally, it measures the effect of educational mismatch on labour market earnings, as well as marginal wage effects of each surplus (or deficit) year of education. Methodological improvements ensure that the results are robust to the sample selection bias, as well as the endogeneity bias.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the incidence and earning effects of the vertical mismatch between attained and required educational qualifications in a developing country’s labor market.

Following Duncan and Hoffman (1981), this paper uses the augmented Mincerian wage equation to decompose the actual years of education of a person into years of over-education, years of required education and years of under-education. These years of education are then fitted in an ordinary least squares model to measure the earning effects of an employee when his/her attained educational qualifications are higher or lower than the required educational level in his/her job.

Unlike studies in developed countries, this paper finds that Vietnam has a higher incidence of under-education than over-education due to a large proportion of the population in rural and remote areas not having access to formal education. Further, qualification mismatch has an asymmetric effect on earnings in the sense that the wage rate is flexible downward but rigid upward. In particular, years of schooling that are in excess or in deficit of the required level for the job are not compensated with higher earnings. This paper concludes that although qualification mismatch incidence in Vietnam is different from that in developed countries, mismatched workers also suffer from significant wage penalty.

This paper makes a significant contribution by providing the first evidence from a developing country to the vertical mismatch literature which has already been overwhelmed with studies from advanced economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate vertical and horizontal mismatch between education and current occupation for graduates in four post-communist societies: Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia. In this way it contributes to the field by exploring how mechanisms, known from previous studies on western societies, affect job mismatch in emerging market economies.

Two dependent variables are constructed: working in a non-graduate occupation as defined by the ISCO job title depicts vertical mismatch; assessment of the job from the perspective of the fields of study describes horizontal mismatch. Since the dependent variables are dichotomous ones, binary logistic regression models are fitted to the data predicting the incidence of mismatch. Explanatory variables cover mechanisms affecting job mismatch: variation by fields of studies, accumulated work experience during studies, labour market uncertainties during early career, trade off between job safety and job mismatch, persistence of “bad” labour market entry during early career, influence of parental background on school-to-work transition.

The analysis reveals significant differences for study fields in association with occupational specificity of the disciplines. Only study-related work experience seems to be advantageous to find a matching job. Labour market uncertainties increase the probability of job mismatch. Job safety is more important than a matching job.

Mismatch in first occupation has strong and long-lasting effect on the job match even five years after the graduation. The effect of parental background on job mismatch is curvilinear.