Overeducation and its effects on wages: a closer look at the Spanish regions

• Main Authors: Lorenzo Serrano, Laura Hernández
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AECR 2012-01-01
• Series: Investigaciones Regionales - Journal of Regional Research
• Subjects: Overeducation; education mismatch; returns to education; quantile regression; regional labour markets
• Online Access: http://www.aecr.org/images/ImatgesArticles/2012/12/4_HERNANDEZ.pdf

This paper uses data from the 2004 to 2009 Living Conditions Survey (LCS) to analyze the wage gap between the adjusted and the overqualified employees in the Spanish regions using standard Mincer equations, quantile regression and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The results indicate that in Spain there is a 28% difference between the gross hourly wage between the overqualified and well-matched employees, of which 25 percentage points correspond to the discrimination effect and only three percentage points correspond to the characteristics of the individuals and the firms they work in. These results show that the effects of overeducation on the regional economies are genuine and substantial and present a considerable heterogeneity.