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This paper uses data from the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs survey (ESJS) (Cedefop, 2014, ESJS microdata are Cedefop copyright and are reproduced with the permission of Cedefop. Further information is available at Cedefop, 2015), a new international dataset on skill mismatch of adult workers in 28 EU countries, to decompose the wage penalty of overeducated workers. The ESJ survey allows for integration of a rich set of variables in the estimation of the effect of overeducation on earnings, such as individuals’ job search motives and the skill needs of their jobs. Oaxaca decomposition techniques are employed to uncover the extent to which the earnings penalties of overeducated workers can be attributed to either (i) individual human capital attributes, (ii) job characteristics, (iii) information asymmetries, (iv) compensating job attributes, or (iv) assignment to jobs with different skill needs. Differences in human capital and job-skill requirements are important factors in explaining the wage premium. It is found that asymmetry of information accounts for a significant part of the overeducation wage penalty of tertiary education graduates, whereas job characteristics and the low skill content of their jobs can explain most of the wage gap for medium-qualified employees. Little evidence is found in favor of equilibrium theories of compensating wage differentials and career mobility. Accepting that much remains to be learned with regards to the drivers of overeducation, this paper provides evidence in support of the need for customized policy responses to tackle overeducation.

This paper contributes to the literature on overeducation by empirically investigating the wage penalty of job–education mismatch among PhD holders who completed their studies in Italy; a country where the number of new doctoral recipients has dramatically increased over recent years while personnel employed in R&D activities is still below the European average. We use cross-sectional micro-data collected in 2009 and rely on different definitions of education–job mismatch such as, overeducation, overskilling, and dissatisfaction with the use of skills. We find that overeducation and skills dissatisfaction are associated with significantly lower wages but there is no wage penalty from overskilling. Furthermore, those who simultaneously report overeducation and skills dissatisfaction experience a particularly high wage penalty.

Research shows that parental employment and education status affect the amount of parental childcare time, which is a fundamental determinant of children's outcomes. In this paper, the authors study whether being overeducated – working in a job that requires less education than the level of education acquired – is related to the time parents devote to their children.

The authors set two main hypotheses. First, overeducation might lead to more childcare time if being overeducated is the result of the individual prioritizing family over career. Second, overeducation might lead to less childcare time if overeducation is the result of lower ability. The authors estimate time use equations using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2004 to 2019.

The authors find that overeducated parents devote less time to childcare than matched parents, especially in the weekend sample. The authors’ results suggest that overeducation is not a deliberate choice prioritizing family over career.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on the implications of being overeducated on childcare.

The wage effect of job–education vertical mismatch (i.e. overeducation) has only recently been investigated in the case of Ph.D. holders. The existing contributions rely on ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates that allow measuring the average effect of being mismatched at the mean of the conditional wage distribution.

The authors implement a recentered influence function (RIF) to estimate the overeducation gap along the entire hourly wage distribution and compare Ph.D. holders who are overeducated with those who are not on a specific sample of Ph.D. holders in different fields of study and European Research Council (ERC) categories. Moreover, the authors compare the overeducation gap between graduates working in the academic and non-academic sector.

The results reveal that overeducation hits the wages of those Ph.D. holders who are employed in the academic sector and in non-research and development (R&D) jobs outside of the academic sector, while no penalty exists among those who carry out R&D activities outside the academia. The size of the penalty is higher among those who are in the mid-top of the wage distribution and hold a Social Science and Humanities specialization.

Two policies could reduce the probability of overeducation: (a) a reallocation of Ph.D. grants from low to high demand fields of study and (b) the diffusion of industrial over academic Ph.Ds.

This paper observes the heterogeneity of the overeducation penalty along the wage distribution and according to Ph.D. holders' study field and sector of employment (academic/non-academic).

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of overeducation on wages in the Italian graduate labour market.

The relationship between overeducation and wages is analysed using a double selection approach. Two basic individuals' decisions are explicitly considered in the analysis: the decision to work and the choice of occupation. The first one could create a problem of sample selection bias, whereas the second one could generate an endogeneity bias.

Although in line with previous studies it was found that overeducated workers earn less than their appropriately educated peers, the results suggest also that this pay gap is significantly higher when a double selectivity approach is used than when an OLS approach is employed. The main reason why OLS techniques significantly underestimate the wage penalty associated with overeducation appears to be the bias introduced by the endogeneity of overeducation.

Recent studies have examined the impact of overeducation on earnings using a single selection framework. This paper extends previous work by analysing the relationship between overeducation and wages using a double selection approach. Additionally, little research has focused on overeducation in Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how job demands and control contribute to the relationship between overeducation and job satisfaction.

The analysis is based on data for Belgian young workers up to the age of 26. The authors execute regression analyses, with autonomy, quantitative demands and job satisfaction as dependent variables. The authors account for unobserved individual heterogeneity by means of panel-data techniques.

The results reveal a significant role of demands and control for the relationship between overeducation and job satisfaction. At career start, overeducated workers have less control than adequately educated individuals with similar skills levels, but more control than adequately educated employees doing similar work. Moreover, their control increases faster over the career than that of adequately educated workers with a similar educational background. Finally, demands have less adverse effects on satisfaction for high-skilled workers, irrespective of their match, while control moderates the negative satisfaction effect of overeducation.

Future research should look beyond the early career and focus on other potential compensation mechanisms for overeducation. Also the role of underlying mechanisms, such as job crafting, deserves more attention.

The results suggest that providing more autonomy is an effective strategy to avoid job dissatisfaction among overeducated workers.

The study connects two areas of research, namely, that on overeducation and its consequences and that on the role of job demands and control for workers’ well-being. The results contribute to a better understanding why overeducation persists. Moreover, they are consistent with the hypothesis that employers hire overeducated workers because they require less monitoring and are more able to cope with demands, although more direct evidence on this is needed.

The phenomenon of overeducation and the magnitude and persistence of the imbalance impact are analysed for the Spanish labour market from 2006 to 2013.

The authors present random-effects probit estimations comparing individuals and their short-term and long-term labour mismatches.

The results support the existence of long-term persistence (status in the previous year) and short-term persistence (status at the beginning of the observed period) in overeducation. Precariousness in the labour market, measured by temporality or by the strong destruction of employment, could force individuals to choose a job below their qualification. Additionally, the phenomenon of overeducation is shown to have increased in the period 2010–2013 in relation to the period 2006–2009 independently of the region considered, though those regions with higher unemployment rates display greater imbalances.

Although the results come from two different samples, it is possible to conclude that overeducation is a phenomenon that tends to perpetuate over time in Spain.

One of the issues of greatest interest that is crucial to assess the relevance of the spreading of overeducation is whether overeducation can be considered as a temporal mismatch, in which case the seriousness of the problem would not be so important, or, on the contrary, as a persistent one, in which case, governments should take it into account in their education reform programmes.

Overeducation persistence has been studied in countries such as the United States, Canada, Switzerland or Germany; however, in Spain, there are hardly any studies. Spanish labour market has certain specificities that make the analyses relevant: the high unemployment rates and high elasticity of employment with respect to the economic cycles. Under these circumstances, workers could opt for more stable positions that require a lower qualification than the one they have. This option could be even more convenient during crisis. Additionally, the article includes a disaggregated analysis by Spanish regions. The differences in the unemployment rates within and between regions are significant (some of them had at the beginning of the crisis an unemployment rate close to 7%, while in others it exceeded 12%) which allows the authors to study the phenomenon in different contexts.

This study aims to investigate the extent to which overeducation imposes wage effects on university graduates, taking into account the individual heterogeneity due to skills and innate ability.

Using Graduates Occupation and Mobility Survey (GOMS) 2019 and Korea Dictionary of Occupations (KDOT) 2019, the overeducated and adequately educated graduates are differentiated by the job analysis (JA) measure. To unveil the masked results, the unconditional quantile regression (UQR) accompanying skills and field of study mismatches is adopted to explore the wage effects of overeducation across the overall wage distribution.

Empirical evidence shows that the incidence of overeducation is high; however, overeducated graduates only suffer a 6.5% wage loss relative to their adequately matched peers. The findings indicate that regardless of being derived from either overskilled or field of study mismatch, genuine overeducation impose a higher wage penalty at all percentiles relative to the apparent overeducation. Meanwhile, high-ability men suffer lower-wage penalties than their low-ability peers, whereas the inverted “U” pattern is exhibited for women. The theoretical hypotheses differ depending on the estimated results by gender.

Each measure of educational mismatch has been criticized for its insurmountable shortcoming. The recent graduates are likely to overstate the job requires of skills.

This paper contributes to the insufficient evidence on the multiple aspects of wage effects of overeducation by providing new and rigorous examinations and by focusing on the country experiencing rapid economic growth, industrial upgrading and educational expansion.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the pivotal role of overeducation in explaining the unexplained part of the gender pay gap (GPG), i.e. the component usually attributed to gender discrimination in the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition.

The study uses a large Italian data set (ISFOL PLUS 2005–2014) to estimate the GPG among properly educated and overeducated workers. The model simultaneously accounts for both participation bias and endogeneity bias by applying an extension of the Heckman’s two-stage procedure.

Estimates show that the GPG is significantly higher among overeducated than among properly educated workers because women’s unobservable characteristics driving female employment into overeducation also drag down female wages more than men’s unobservable characteristics drag down male wages. Correcting for the participation and overeducation decisions, the unexplained portion of the GPG disappears among overeducated workers, while it remains significant among properly educated individuals.

The authors draw the conclusion that overeducation is, first, a first-best matching for individuals (both men and women) compensating with more education for their lower productive characteristics. Second, it may be a signaling device for women spending their useless-for-the-job diploma to inform employers on their valuable though unobservable productive characteristics and fight gender wage discrimination. The results favor education as a tool of counteracting gender discrimination. Hence, as females are less overeducated than males despite their larger representation in higher education, there should not be concern that expanding higher education will disadvantage females.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the measurement sensitivity of the estimated determinants of overeducation.

The paper analyses the determinants of overeducation among Flemish school leavers in their first job by means of probit regression analysis. Overeducation is measured on the basis of job analysis (JA), self‐assessments and realised matches.

The results demonstrate that the application of different overeducation measures sometimes leads to different outcomes. Only a few variables – for instance the student's academic grade in the final year – are consistently found to be important for the explanation of overeducation. Some outcomes are consistent with the supposition that several indicators actually measure other concepts.

Further research using JA measures that are based on alternative and more recent occupational classifications would be useful.

The application of different measures provides further insight into the overeducation measurement problem.