Search Results (9)

With the widespread popularization of higher education, the increased supply of knowledge laborers has heightened the risk of overeducation, posing a significant threat to employment quality. Utilizing data from the CGSS2015 survey, this study controls for selection bias by matching employed and self-employed individuals using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to distinguish and estimate the signaling and productivity effects of overeducation in China. The findings indicate that the signaling effects of overeducation are not significant, challenging the Weak Screening Hypothesis (WSH) and suggesting that overeducation in China is not genuine overeducation. It is also acknowledged that overeducation has dual productivity effects, including the loss of personal productivity and the promotion of job productivity. This implies that overeducation has contributed to the increase of social productivity at the cost of personal sacrifice. Full article

This paper focuses on the impact of the educational mismatch on workers’ fertility intentions and explores the underlying mechanisms. Empirical research based on the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) data shows that undereducation has a negative effect on the fertility intentions of women aged 18–35, whereas overeducation reports no effect, a finding that remains stable in the robustness test and the IV model. An explanation for this phenomenon is that undereducated female workers have a wage premium and higher expectations of career development, which implies a greater opportunity cost of fertility. The heterogeneity analysis shows that women with low socio-economic status, especially those who are less educated, from low-income households, and who are employed in the private sector, are more affected. It is therefore necessary to reduce the substitution risk in the labor market for this group and to lighten the fertility burden and pressure on women. Full article

Overeducation means that the rapid growth in the numbers of secondary and higher education graduates begins to exceed the actual demand of the labor market due to this excessive expansion of education. Consequently, educated workers are faced with knowledge unemployment, or are engaged in jobs that do not match their academic qualifications, resulting in a decline in income and a waste of educational resources. In order to explore the effect of overeducation on workers’ job satisfaction, we selected data from China Household Tracking Survey (CFPS) and conducted a fixed-effect ordered logit model regression analysis. It was found that overeducation has a negative impact on employees’ job satisfaction and an impact on wage penalty. Wage income has a mediating effect on the relationship between overeducation and job satisfaction. We present three policy suggestions: for the Government’s administration department, it is necessary to actively create an environment for matching education and occupation; to improve the possibility of matching education and occupation; and to reduce the negative effect of labor contracts on the improvement of human capital and the job satisfaction of overeducators by adjusting the flexibility and stability of the labor contract. For institutions of higher learning: it is necessary to make forward-looking adjustments to the educational structure, according to the actual needs of economic and social development to adapt to the social demand for talent and development trends; to train highly skilled and high-quality workers needed for social development; and to reduce the unreasonable distribution of resources caused by overeducation. For enterprises: employees should be guided to correctly understand the unpredictable relationship between education and work and reasonably reduce the job expectations of new employees, according to their own work experience and technical level. Full article

Current anti-doping policy seeks to protect honest athletes from biochemically overeducated colleagues. However, there is a question of whether the present policy has gone too far. This article illustrates the ambiguity of the anti-doping policy in the context of a particular plant-based substance (i.e., higenamine) by providing certain case studies. In such cases, the process of proof requires the continuous checking of suppositions since an athlete must establish how the prohibited substance could have entered his or her body. This obligation implies that an athlete and the defending team must have legal, medical, dietary, and biochemical knowledge. However, even with all precautions, it is still possible to fail an anti-doping test and be severely punished because it is almost impossible to trace all the sources that caused the prohibited substance to enter the athlete’s body. Full article

This article examines the impact of overeducation on attitudes towards the political system and political participation. Using survey data from Spain, diagonal reference models were estimated to contrast hypotheses based on the theory of status inconsistency. The evidence links overeducation to political attitudes (lower satisfaction with the functioning of democracy, lower external political efficacy) and political participation (greater participation in protests, higher membership in associations). Most of these effects are modest and some of them are moderated by age. Overall, the findings indicate that overeducation has relevant political consequences, mainly among young, university-educated workers doing jobs with low educational requirements. However, overeducation does not pose a major threat to political stability. Full article

The misalignment between workers’ educational levels and the educational level typically required for their occupations, namely educational mismatch, has become widespread. However, despite its potential costs, there is little evidence of this situation in developing countries. Using longitudinal and retrospective data of employment histories between 2009 and 2019, this paper conducts sequence analysis to construct a typology of educational mismatch trajectories among Chilean workers. We demonstrate that mismatch is a prevalent and persistent phenomenon. Once people enter the labor market, either as undereducated or overeducated workers, they tend to stay in such positions for extended periods of time. Moreover, we find significant wage penalties for workers in a mismatch situation. Results indicate that females and young, less-educated men are more prone to follow trajectories with longer periods of mismatch or unemployment. New avenues for research and the need for public policies looking at these phenomena are required to avoid people’s dissatisfaction due to a possible false promise that more education can improve their life standards. Full article

The expansion of education all over the world is expected to improve economic and social development. However, the oversupply of educated labor force might bring unfavorable consequences for the labor market and long-run growth prospects. In this regard the purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims at summarizing the main channels and mechanisms through which education–job mismatch could impact the changes of per capita income. Second, the study presents empirical evidence on that impact by differentiating between qualification mismatch among workers having completed tertiary education and those with upper secondary education. The sample comprises the EU member countries between 2000 and 2019. The results suggest that whereas the higher percentage of the properly matched labor force increases the steady-state level of per capita output for both educational levels being considered, the effect of qualification mismatch is either negative or insignificant. There is some evidence that overeducation among higher education graduates exhibits a stronger negative effect on economic activity in comparison with overeducation among workers with upper secondary education. Full article

Overeducation is indicative of a suboptimal education–job match and is related to several negative consequences for workers. Despite extensive research explaining the overeducation phenomenon, previous studies have not simultaneously analyzed educational background (i.e., educational degrees) and social background effects, or have failed to consider both the vertical and horizontal dimension that educational degrees entail (i.e., level and field). This article seeks to overcome these limitations by examining whether overeducation varies (1) across educational background (considering both level and field of educational degrees), (2) across social background, and (3) by social background among workers with the same degree. Based on the German BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey 2018, results suggest that highly educated workers are more likely to be overeducated for the jobs they hold, implying the supply of this workforce exceeds the available adequate jobs on the German labor market. The field of education determines the risk of overeducation as well, with some occupationally specific fields of education (IT, natural sciences, and health) making for lower overeducation risk for both vocational and academic education. The results also indicate social background directly influences education–job matches (controlling for level and field of education), i.e., a social gap in overeducation. This evidence suggests an effect of social background on job allocation processes, beyond the effect of education, so that the offspring of privileged classes (i.e., high salariat) use the same degrees on the labor market more profitably than the offspring of less privileged classes. Given the low attention paid to education–job matches in social stratification analyses, the present article makes a noteworthy contribution to the literature on social stratification and inequality. In addition, the present research will serve as a base for future studies on overeducation including both the vertical and horizontal dimension of educational degrees. Full article

One of the approaches describing the strategic vision initiated by the Europe 2020 Strategy for smart sustainable and inclusive growth considers that increasing public expenses with education can help in achieving its goals. Concomitantly, higher levels of educational attainment are supposed to at least partially offset the negative effects of economic crises. Nevertheless, one of the consequences of this strategic approach—overeducation—tends to be underrated. This article aims to analyse the influence of the institutional arrangements of the business environment and labour market on overeducation in Romania. For this purpose, we designed two indicators for the institutional quality of business environment and labour market. Their evolutions were compared with the change in the unemployment rate among tertiary graduates. The research reveals that in Romania, the quality of institutional arrangements can still be improved, and that one of its negative consequences is unemployment and an exacerbated number of tertiary graduates in the higher education system. An inverse relationship has been identified between the quality of institutional arrangements of business environment and labour market, on one hand, and the rate of tertiary graduates who never worked in the total unemployed tertiary graduates, on the other hand. Full article