The Career Prospects of Overeducated Americans
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2014-05-01
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In this paper we analyze career dynamics for the large share of U.S. workers who have more schooling than their peers in the same occupation. We use data from the NLSY79 combined with the CPS to analyze transitions into and out of overeducated employment, together with the corresponding effects on wages. Overeducation is a fairly persistent phenomenon at the aggregate and individual levels, with 66% of workers remaining overeducated after one year. Overeducation is not only more common, but also more persistent among blacks and low-AFQT individuals. Further, the hazard rate out of overeducation drops by about 60% during the first 5 years spent overeducated. However, the estimation of a mixed proportional hazard model suggests that this is attributable to selection on unobservables rather than true duration dependence. Finally, overeducation is associated with lower current as well as future wages, which points to the existence of scarring effects.
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Scholars@Duke
Arnaud Maurel
Professor Maurel’s research focuses on labor economics/education and microeconometrics. Most of his non-methodological work lies at the intersection between the economics of education and labor economics, with a focus on post-secondary education demand and occupational choices. On the methodological side, his research is concerned with the identification and estimation of selection and treatment effect models, as well as models of occupational choice and job search, and on data combination issues applied in particular to subjective expectations data. His most recent work has been published in such journals as the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Labor Economics, Quantitative Economics, Journal of Econometrics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He has received several research awards, notably the 2015 Dennis J. Aigner Award for the most significant contribution in empirical econometrics published by the Journal of Econometrics in 2013-2014. He is also a Research Associate at the NBER (Labor Studies) and IZA, a Co-Editor of Annals of Economics and Statistics, and Associate Editor at Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics.
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