Overeducation at the start of the career - stepping stone or trap?

Stijn Baert, Bart Cockx and Dieter Verhaest

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: This study investigates whether young unemployed graduates who accept a job below their level of education accelerate or delay the transition into a job that matches their level of education. We adopt the Timing of Events approach to identify this dynamic treatment effect using monthly calendar data from a representative sample of Flemish (Belgian) youth who started searching for a job right after leaving formal education. We find that overeducation is a trap. This trap is especially important early in the unemployment spell. Our results are robust across various specifications and for two overeducation measures.

Keywords: overqualification; underemployment; school-to-work transitions; duration analysis; dynamic treatment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C41 I21 J24 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_12_787.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Overeducation at the start of the career: Stepping stone or trap? (2013)
Working Paper: Overeducation at the Start of the Career - Stepping Stone or Trap? (2012)
Working Paper: Overeducation at the start of the career - stepping stone or trap? (2012)
Working Paper: Overeducation at the start of the career - stepping stone or trap? (2012)
Working Paper: Overeducation at the Start of the Career: Stepping Stone or Trap? (2012)
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:rug:rugwps:12/787

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nathalie Verhaeghe ().