Educational mismatch and labor earnings in Brazil

Mauricio Reis

International Journal of Manpower, 2017, vol. 38, issue 2, 180-197

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between educational mismatch and labor earnings in Brazil, taking into account individual fixed effects. Design/methodology/approach - The empirical analysis employs longitudinal data and information provided by job analysts about the schooling required for each occupation. The latter of which is used to classify workers as undereducated, overeducated, or adequately matched. Estimates include individual fixed effects to control for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Findings - Evidence indicates that one more year of overeducation increases labor earnings, but only half as strong as one more year of required schooling. The estimated effects on years of undereducation are negative, but undereducated workers earn more than adequately matched workers with the same level of education. Although, in particular, the incidence of undereducation in Brazil is much higher than reported for developed countries, the impact of over- and undereducation does not differ. Research limitations/implications - The fixed effects approach only controls for unobservable factors that are time-invariant. Also, much lower impacts using fixed effects may be due in part to attenuation bias as a consequence of measurement errors. Originality/value - This study contributes to the scarce literature on the consequences of overeducation and undereducation for labor earnings in developing countries, providing estimates that take into account individual fixed effects.

Keywords: Brazil; Overeducation; Undereducation; Labor earnings; J24; J31; I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:ijmpps:ijm-02-2016-0030

DOI: 10.1108/IJM-02-2016-0030

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Manpower is currently edited by Professor Adrian Ziderman

More articles in International Journal of Manpower from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().