Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/261317 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1126
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
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.
Subjects: 
PhD graduates
over-education
over-skilling
job satisfaction
wages
Europe
JEL: 
J21
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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