IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp9698.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Deconstructing Theories of Overeducation in Europe: A Wage Decomposition Approach

Author

Listed:
  • McGuinness, Seamus

    (Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin)

  • Pouliakas, Konstantinos

    (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop))

Abstract

This paper uses data from the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs (ESJ) survey, a new international dataset of adult workers in 28 EU countries, to decompose the wage penalty of overeducated workers. The ESJ survey allows for integration of a rich, previously unavailable, set of factors in the estimation of the effect of overeducation on earnings. Oaxaca decomposition techniques are employed to uncover the extent to which the overeducation wage penalty can be attributed to either (i) human capital attributes, (ii) job characteristics, (iii) information asymmetries, (iv) compensating job attributes or (v) skill needs of jobs. 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 for tertiary education graduates, whereas job characteristics and low skill content of jobs explain most of the wage gap for medium-qualified employees. Little evidence is found in favour of equilibrium theories of skills matching and compensating wage differentials. The paper thus highlights the need for customised policy responses (e.g. career guidance; policies to raise job quality) to tackle overeducation.

Suggested Citation

  • McGuinness, Seamus & Pouliakas, Konstantinos, 2016. "Deconstructing Theories of Overeducation in Europe: A Wage Decomposition Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 9698, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp9698.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hartog, Joop, 2000. "Over-education and earnings: where are we, where should we go?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 131-147, April.
    2. Kostas Mavromaras & St�phane Mahuteau & Peter Sloane & Zhang Wei, 2013. "The effect of overskilling dynamics on wages," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 281-303, July.
    3. Sattinger, Michael & Hartog, Joop, 2013. "Nash bargaining and the wage consequences of educational mismatches," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 50-56.
    4. S. Mcguinness, 2003. "Graduate overeducation as a sheepskin effect: evidence from Northern Ireland," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(5), pages 597-608.
    5. Duncan, Greg J. & Hoffman, Saul D., 1981. "The incidence and wage effects of overeducation," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 75-86, February.
    6. Sattinger, Michael, 1993. "Assignment Models of the Distribution of Earnings," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 831-880, June.
    7. Mavromaras, Kostas & McGuinness, Seamus & O?Leary, Nigel & Sloane, Peter & Fok, Yin King, 2009. "Job Mismatches and Labour Market Outcomes," Papers WP314, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seamus McGuinness & Adele Bergin & Adele Whelan, 2018. "Overeducation in Europe: trends, convergence, and drivers," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 994-1015.
    2. Варшавская Е. Я. & Котырло Е. С., 2019. "Выпускники Инженерно-Технических И Экономических Специальностей: Между Спросом И Предложением," Вопросы образования // Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 2, pages 98-128.
    3. Seamus McGuinness & Konstantinos Pouliakas & Paul Redmond, 2018. "Skills Mismatch: Concepts, Measurement And Policy Approaches," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 985-1015, September.
    4. Elena Varshavskaya & Elena Kotyrlo, 2019. "Engineering and Economics Graduates: Between Demand and Supply," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 2, pages 98-128.
    5. Guillermo Montt, 2017. "Field-of-study mismatch and overqualification: labour market correlates and their wage penalty," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-20, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kampelmann, Stephan & Rycx, François, 2012. "The impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity: Evidence from linked panel data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 918-931.
    2. L. Cattani & G. Guidetti & G. Pedrini, 2014. "Assessing the incidence and wage effects of overeducation among Italian graduates using a new measure for educational requirements," Working Papers wp939, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    3. Yih‐chyi Chuang & Chia‐Yu Liang, 2022. "Overeducation and skill mismatch of university graduates in Taiwan," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 1693-1712, August.
    4. Sandra Nieto & Raul Ramos, 2017. "Overeducation, Skills and Wage Penalty: Evidence for Spain Using PIAAC Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 219-236, October.
    5. Inmaculada Garc�a-Mainar & V�ctor M. Montuenga-G�mez, 2017. "Subjective educational mismatch and signalling in Spain," Documentos de Trabajo dt2017-03, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Zaragoza.
    6. Giuseppe Croce & Emanuela Ghignoni, 2011. "Overeducation and spatial flexibility in Italian local labour markets," Working Papers in Public Economics 145, University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Economics and Law.
    7. Shweta Bahl & Ajay Sharma, 2021. "Education–Occupation Mismatch and Dispersion in Returns to Education: Evidence from India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 251-298, January.
    8. Marco Pecoraro, 2014. "Is There Still a Wage Penalty for Being Overeducated But Well-matched in Skills? A Panel Data Analysis of a Swiss Graduate Cohort," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(3), pages 309-337, September.
    9. Eleni Kalfa & Matloob Piracha, 2017. "Immigrants’ educational mismatch and the penalty of over-education," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(5), pages 462-481, September.
    10. Rolf van der Velden & Mark Levels & Jim Allen, 2014. "Educational mismatches and skills: New empirical tests of old hypotheses," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 9, in: Adela García Aracil & Isabel Neira Gómez (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 9, edition 1, volume 9, chapter 34, pages 655-680, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    11. Korpi, Tomas & Tåhlin, Michael, 2009. "Educational mismatch, wages, and wage growth: Overeducation in Sweden, 1974-2000," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 183-193, April.
    12. Brian Clark & Clément Joubert & Arnaud Maurel, 2017. "The career prospects of overeducated Americans," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-29, December.
    13. H. Battu & P. J. Sloane, 2004. "Over‐Education and Ethnic Minorities in Britain," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 72(4), pages 535-559, July.
    14. Sucharita Ghosh & Emanuele Grassi, 2020. "Overeducation and overskilling in the early careers of PhD graduates: Does international migration reduce labour market mismatch?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(4), pages 915-944, August.
    15. Giorgio Di Pietro & Peter Urwin, 2006. "Education and skills mismatch in the Italian graduate labour market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 79-93.
    16. Araújo, Isabel & Carneiro, Anabela, 2020. "Educational Mismatches of Newly Hired Workers: Short and Medium-run Effects on Wages," GLO Discussion Paper Series 668, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    17. V. Jacobs & F. Rycx & M. Volral, 2022. "Wage Effects of Educational Mismatch According to Workers’ Origin: The Role of Demographics and Firm Characteristics," De Economist, Springer, vol. 170(4), pages 459-501, November.
    18. Oliver Fabel & Razvan Pascalau, 2013. "Recruitment of Seemingly Overeducated Personnel: Insider--Outsider Effects on Fair Employee Selection Practices," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 57-82, February.
    19. Rycx, François & Santosuosso, Giulia & Vermeylen, Guillaume, 2022. "The Over-education Wage Penalty Among PhD Holders: A European Perspective," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1126, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    20. Sattinger, Michael & Hartog, Joop, 2013. "Nash bargaining and the wage consequences of educational mismatches," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 50-56.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    decomposition; wages; mismatch; skills; overeducation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9698. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.