Overeducation: Concept,theories, and empirical evidence

The educational expansion experienced in most advanced economies in the past few decades has triggered a thriving debate on overeducation. Research on overeducation has traditionally been addressed from an economic perspective, mainly focusing on wage returns to extra years of education. More recently, the sociological literature has contributed to overeducation research by identifying individual characteristics that help us to differentiate overeducated from non‐overeducated workers. Moreover, the sociological perspective has explored more in depth the role of educational and labour market institutions in assessing overeducation incidence and duration across countries. These contributions have eased the path to frame overeducation as a form of social stratification, rather than as an inefficient educational investment in economic terms. The present article reviews the economic literature on overeducation and incorporates the sociological perspective, understanding overeducation as a disadvantageous form of employment.     

Measuring Overeducation: Incidence,Correlation and Overlaps Across Indicators and Countries

The methodological debate on how to measure overeducation has been present since the introduction of the topic in the academic debate. Nevertheless, there is still no consensus on a preferred indicator. This article aims at contributing to the existing methodological debate providing systematic and cross-country evidence on the variation across overeducation measurements. Using REFLEX/HEGESCO and EULFS datasets, I provide evidence on within and across countries variation on the incidence, correlation and overlaps across the main types of objective, statistical and subjective overeducation indicators. Results suggest that worker’s self-reported indicators better cope with comparative studies, while in single-country studies objective indicators are likely to provide a more in-depth and detailed measurement. The use of statistical indicators is advised in contexts with labour markets that easily adapt to educational and employment changes, especially if these are not affected by credential inflation. However, it is advisable to use more than one indicator whenever data allows it, as different types of overeducation measurements provide different outcomes and results are likely to be complementary rather than excluding information on the overeducation phenomenon. This is especially relevant when overeducation is used as a dependent variable rather than a predictor. An initial review and discussion of the existing types of overeducation measurements and their advantages and drawbacks precedes the empirical evidence.