We use longitudinal test data on various aspects of persons’ cognitive abilities to analyze whether overeducated workers are more vulnerable to cognitive decline, and undereducated workers are less vulnerable. We find that the job-worker mismatch induces cognitive decline with respect to immediate and delayed recall abilities, cognitive flexibility and verbal fluency. Our findings indicate that, to some extent, it is the adjustment of the ability level of the overeducated and undereducated workers that adjusts initial mismatch. This adds to the relevance of preventing overeducation, and shows that being employed above one’s level of education contributes to workers’ cognitive resilience.
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Paper provided by Maastricht : ROA, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market in its series Research Memoranda with number
009.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J., 2003.
"Human Capital Policy,"
IZA Discussion Papers
821, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
James Heckman & Pedro Carneiro, 2003.
"Human Capital Policy,"
NBER Working Papers
9495, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)