A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that over-educated PhD holders face a wage penalty ranging from 25 to 13.5% with respect to their well-matched counterparts.
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1126, 2022
The Over-education Wage Penalty Among PhD Holders: A European Perspective – Download PDF
by Rycx, François & Santosuosso, Giulia & Vermeylen, Guillaume
GLO Fellow François Rycx
Author Abstract: While the literature on the incidence and wage effects of over-education is substantial, specific results for doctoral graduates are surprisingly scarce. This article aims to fill this gap, not only by measuring the prevalence of over-educated PhD holders in Europe (i.e. in EU Member States and the UK), but also by estimating their wage penalty relative to what they could have earned in a job corresponding to their level of education. Using a unique pan-European dataset, we rely on two alternative measures of over-education and control stepwise for four groups of covariates (i.e. socio-demographic characteristics, skills needed for the job, other job-specific characteristics and motivations for employment) in order to interpret the over-education wage penalty in light of theoretical models. Depending on the specification adopted, we find that over-educated PhD holders face a wage penalty ranging from 25 to 13.5% with respect to their well-matched counterparts. Our results also show that the over-education wage penalty is significantly higher for PhD holders who are both over-educated and over-skilled and especially for those who are both over-educated and dissatisfied with their jobs. Finally, unconditional quantile regressions highlight that the over-education wage penalty among PhD holders increases greatly along the wage distribution.
JUST PUBLISHED
Vol. 35, Issue 4, October 2022: Journal of Population Economics (JOPE): 15 articles
https://link.springer.com/journal/148/volumes-and-issues/35-4
Just released: CiteScore of JOPE moves up from 3.9 (2020) to 6.5 (2021)! LINK
Similar, its Impact Factor is now 4.7 (2021) after 2.8 (2020)! LINK
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