The Overeducation Phenomenon in Europe

Abstract

The overeducation literature has typically assumed that the effect of overeducation on wages is constant across the conditional wage distribution. in this paper we use quantile regression and data from a group of European countries to show that differences across segments of the distribution are indeed large. We find significant differences between sexes, in the sense that it is not true that in countries where men are penalised more severely, women are also severely penalised. moreover, different trends are observed depending on the country and sex. for example in Germany, the wage penalty for overeducation is higher among women than men. furthermore, while the wage penalty for men increases from decile 10 to decile 90, the wage penalty decreases for women. in spain, women are more severely penalised for overeducation than men and the effect of overeducation is quite homogeneous across deciles for both men and women. AdditionAl Keywordsconditional distribution of Wages, European community Household panel, pay-penalty, Quantile regression, unobservable Variables. resumenEn la literatura relacionada con la sobre-educación, es tradicional asumir que el impacto de dicha sobreeducación en los salarios es común a toda la distribución de salarios. En este artículo, con datos de un grupo de países europeos y utilizando la regresión cuantílica se demuestra que, de hecho, el impacto de la sobreeducación es diferente en los distintos segmentos de la distribución de salarios. las diferencias de género y por país son también significativas. así por ejemplo en alemania, la penalización salarial de los sobreeducados es mayor entre las mujeres que entre los hombres, pero mientras para los hombres la penalización es mayor en los deciles superiores, para las mujeres la penalización es mayor en los deciles inferiores. En España, las mujeres son más severamente penalizadas por estar sobre-educadas que los hombres, siendo constante dicha penalización salarial a lo largo de la distribución de salarios. 1 We would like to thank the participants in the seminar at the university of Granada and EalE 2006 in prague for their comments and suggestions. santiago budría is grateful for the funding provided under the EdWin project HpsE-cT-2002-00108 of the European commission and the fcT of the ministry of science and Education of portugal. ana i. moro-Egido thanks the centre for andalusian studies and project sEJ2006-11067/Econ of the spanish ministry of Education and science for their funding.

Skills Mismatch: Concepts, Measurement and Policy Approaches

“…While evidence of an overeducation wage penalty has been found across the wage distribution (Budria and Moro‐Egido ; Ordine and Rose, ), some studies find this is higher at the upper end (Budria, ; Hernandez and Serrano, ) while others find a greater effect at the lower end of the distribution (McGuinness and Bennett, ). The evidence also indicates that the overeducation wage penalty for females is typically greater than that for males (see McGuinness and Bennett, ; McGuinness, ; Robst, ; Budria and Moro‐Egido, ; Mavromaras et al ., ; Sanchez‐Sanchez and McGuinness, ). While overeducated individuals suffer a wage penalty relative to individuals with similar education in matched employment, there is evidence of a wage premium relative to matched individuals in the same occupation, that is, with lower education (see, e.g.…”

“…These are Sellami et al . (), McGuinness and Pouliakas (), Ordine and Rose (), Hernandez and Serrano (), Budria (), Budria and Moro‐Egido (, ), Dolton and Silles (), Chevalier and Lindley (), Cutillo and Di Pietro (), Diem (), Levels et al . (), Mavromaras et al .…”

Gender wage differentials and educational mismatch: an application to the Spanish case

“…men (Dolton and Vignoles, 2000, for the UK; Daly et al, 2000, for Germany;Ren and Miller, 2011, for China), whereas, on the other, different studies point to the opposite result, with women being more penalized by educational mismatch than men (Cohn and Ng, 2000, for Hong Kong;Budría and Moro-Egido, 2009, for the Spanish and German cases).…”

Desajuste educacional y de competencias: efectos diferenciales sobre la satisfacción laboral. Un estudio aplicado al mercado de trabajo español

“…Sin embargo, existen indicios para pensar de que no se trata de un problema transitorio exclusivamente, sino permanente (García Serrano y Malo, 1996). En España, el porcentaje de trabajadores sobreeducados se sitúa en torno al 25%, mientras que la media europea lo hace en torno al 22% 2 (Budria y Moro-Egido, 2009). …”