Overeducation, job mobility and earnings mobility among holders of first degrees

ABSTRACT

Overeducation has been researched extensively for nearly three decades, but some major issues in regard to it are still topics of ongoing debate. By using a panel data, that combines a survey of two cohorts of Israeli first-degree holders and data from administrative sources on jobs and wages, we examine the contribution of job turnover, cognitive abilities and continuing graduate studies to the likelihood of overeducation and wage dynamics. The study produces four main findings. First, rapid job-switching makes a negative contribution to the increase in employee’s wage and there is a negative correlation between two variables – an employee’s tenure and the number of past employers in the years after the completion of degree studies – and the probability of being overeducated. Second, the contribution of the individual’s cognitive abilities and quantitative reasoning skills to the likelihood of becoming overeducated is negative. Third, the wages of overeducated employees are some 11% lower and rise more slowly than the wages of those whose level of schooling corresponds to their jobs; this outcome may be interpreted as indicating that the ‘scars’ of being overeducated tend to be long-lasting. Fourth, the overeducated workers have lower propensity to continue to advanced academic studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Cohort
• graduate studies
• job turnover
• cognitive abilities
• field of study mismatch

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J24
• J31
• J62

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The psychometric examination is composed of three exams: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and English. The score weights each of the first two at 40% and the English exam at 20% weight.

² Importantly, this database has no information about extent of hours worked and about individual’s occupation.

³ In the context of a objective graduates’ cohort survey, empirical measuring is in fact trivial.

⁴ Liberal arts, librarianship, nutrition science etc.

⁵ All six Israel’s universities are included in the THES (The Times Higher Education Supplement) rating list of the top 500 academic institutions.