Influence of Education-job Mismatch on Wages among Higher Education Graduates

Our paper explores the way in which the education-job mismatches impacts the working benefits of higher education graduates. In order to estimate the “wage penalty”, we analyse REFLEX data set, which includes information on early career outcomes of school leavers graduating ISCED 5 in 1999/2000. The survey was carried out in 2005 among higher graduates from 14 countries. Our cross-country analysis compares the wage distribution of matched graduates with that of the mismatched graduates using nonparametric kernel methods to handle a mix of continuous, unordered, and ordered factor data types. The obtained results show a negative effect of the education-job mismatch on wages in most of the countries.