The Over-education Wage Penalty Among PhD Holders: A European Perspective

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: GLO Discussion Paper ; No. 1126

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
• Subject: PhD graduates ; over-education ; over-skilling ; job satisfaction ; wages ; Europe

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Rycx, François ; Santosuosso, Giulia ; Vermeylen, Guillaume
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Global Labor Organization (GLO)
• (where): Essen
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/261317
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET