Overeducation and overskilling in Latin America: evidence from PIAAC

ABSTRACT

Occupational mismatch is a highly debated phenomenon in developed countries, but rarely addressed in developing economies. This study investigates the magnitudes of overeducation and overskilling in four Latin American countries in which tertiary education has expanded rapidly (i.e. Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru). Using objective and subjective measures derived from PIAAC, we find that overeducation affects between 29% and 43% of the workforce and has a regressive nature. Overskilling is significantly lower than overeducation in Peru and Ecuador, and this can be related to more years of education failing to translate into more skills. Overskilling is higher in the OECD than in Latin America, and differences measured using subjective indicators are not related to additional basic skill attainment of OECD workers. This indicates that workers’ perceptions about how their skills compare against the performed tasks involve abilities additional to the basic skills considered in the objective indicators.

摘要

职业错配在发达国家是一个备受争议的现象，但在发展中经济体很少被提及。本研究考察高等教育迅速扩张的四个拉丁美洲国家（智利、厄瓜多尔、墨西哥和秘鲁）教育过度与技能过剩的程度。我们采用国际成人能力评估项目的主客观指标测量，发现过度教育影响了29%∼43%的劳动力，并具有递减性质。在秘鲁和厄瓜多尔，技能过剩程度显著低于教育过度程度，这可能与未能把较长的教育年限转化为更多的技能有关。经合组织国家的教育过度程度高于拉丁美洲，同时，基于主观指标测量的差异与经合组织国家劳动者额外的基本技能水平无关。这表明，劳动者对自身技能和所从事工作匹配性的看法，与客观指标中涉及的基本技能以外的能力相关。

KEYWORDS:

• Latin America
• PIAAC
• occupational mismatch
• overeducation
• overqualification
• overschooling
• overskilling

关键词:

• 拉丁美洲
• 国际成人能力评估项目
• 职业错配
• 过度教育
• 学历过高
• 过度学校教育
• 技能过剩

Acknowledgments

This project was funded by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development [ANID REDES 190070] and Centro de Investigación de la Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, Peru.Support from PIA-ANID Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence Project FB0003 is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Objective overeducation and overskilling indicators are based on the number of years of schooling and the skill test scores of workers. Subjective indicators are based on workers’ perceptions regarding how well their qualifications and skills match the tasks they perform at their jobs. We elaborate on these concepts and indicators in Section 2.2.

2 A process of comprehensive evaluation of basic quality requirements in all 145 universities was undertaken from 2016 to 2022 only after the creation of a public regulatory agency (SUNEDU) resulting in the closure of 50 of them.

3 15 institutions out of a total of 70 were closed due ‘lousy’ (pésima) quality.

4 The calculation of OECD averages does not consider Chile and Mexico, despite the fact that both countries are OECD members, to avoid confounded samples.

5 As data collection took place earlier for Chile, differences with other countries can, in part, be due to historical/cohort effects. However, as shown by Sevilla and Farías (2020), overeducation has recently increased in Chile. Thus, in this case, the estimates for this country are likely to be conservative.

6 Unlike in the other Latin American countries participating in PIAAC, Ecuadorian students can complete a level called ‘bachillerato’, which, according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2012), corresponds to the category of post-secondary non-tertiary education. Despite this particularity, occupational mismatch indicators consider the local context, as they compare workers with others in the same country and occupation, are subjective or are based on individual data (about the skills and tasks a worker performs).

7 Subjective overskilling rates among Agricultural and Fishery, Craft and Elementary Occupations workers are 39.3%, 23.6% and 35.9%, respectively. Overskilling measures for the complete list of occupations are available from the authors upon request.

8 Results for objective overskilling in literacy are very similar and are available from the authors upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juan Francisco Castro

Juan Francisco Castro is a researcher at CIUP Research Center, Dean of the School of Economics and Finance and a professor in the Department of Economics at Universidad del Pacífico, Perú. He received a Ph.D. from International Development from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research work focuses on child development, skills training, education and applied micro-econometrics.

Lorena Ortega

Lorena Ortega is an assistant professor at Instituto de Estudios Avanzados en Educación and a Researcher at CIAE, Universidad de Chile. Before this position, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology, University of Tübingen, Germany, and completed her Ph.D. at Oxford University Department of Education (OUDE). Her research interests involve the application of quantitative methods to investigate effectiveness and equity issues in education.

Gustavo Yamada

Gustavo Yamada is a professor in the department of economics and a researcher at Universidad del Pacífico, Perú. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia University, New York. Gustavo has written extensively on labour, poverty and social issues in Peru and abroad, including books, book chapters and papers in World Development, Economic Development and Cultural Change, International Journal of Manpower, Review of Development Economics and Journal of Economic Policy Reform.

David Mata

David Mata is an economist and has worked as a research assistant at CIUP Research Center at Universidad del Pacífico, Perú. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Universidad del Pacífico.