Over-education and Life Satisfaction among Immigrant and Non-immigrant Workers in Canada

Feng Hou and Kristyn Frank

Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series from Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch

Abstract: The increased migration of skilled workers globally has led to a focus in the immigration literature on the economic costs of unsuccessful labour market integration. Less attention has been given to the consequences of employment difficulties, such as those related to over-education, on aspects of immigrants’ subjective well-being. Although a large proportion of immigrants experience over-education, studies examining the relationship between over-education and life satisfaction tend to concentrate on the general population. These studies find a negative relationship between over-education and life satisfaction. Since immigrant and Canadian-born (non-immigrant) workers may experience over-education differently, it is important to examine this relationship in both groups. This study examines how over-education is associated with life satisfaction among university-educated immigrant and non-immigrant workers in Canada, and accounts for differences in the degree of over-education in each group.

Keywords: Life satisfaction; Underemployment; Skilled workers; Postsecondary education; Non-immigrant population; Immigrants; Emotional well-being; Educational attainment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-05-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hap and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/catalogue/11F0019M2017393 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:stc:stcp3e:2017393e

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series from Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Brown ().