Immigrant Overeducation : Evidence from Denmark
Anecdotes abound in the Danish public debate about well-educated immigrants that are in jobs they are formally overqualified for. Using a 1995-2002 panel data set based on Danish registers, this study attempts to find out how large a problem immigr...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/05/7634533/immigrant-overeducation-evidence-denmark http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7104 |
| Summary: | Anecdotes abound in the Danish public
debate about well-educated immigrants that are in jobs they
are formally overqualified for. Using a 1995-2002 panel data
set based on Danish registers, this study attempts to find
out how large a problem immigrant overeducation is in the
context of the Danish labor market. More specifically, three
questions are posed: First, to what extent are immigrants
overeducated and are they more likely to be so than native
Danes? Second, why are some immigrants more likely to become
overeducated than others? And finally, what are the
consequences of overeducation for individual wages? The
authors find that among wage earners with at least a
vocational education or higher, 25 percent of male
non-Western immigrants are overeducated. The same applies
for 15 percent of native Danes. Particularly immigrants with
a foreign-acquired education risk becoming overeducated -
here the share is 30 percent among those with a vocational
education or higher. The authors find that Danish labor
market experience is extremely important in reducing the
likelihood of becoming overeducated. Years spent in the
country without accumulating labor market experience do not
improve an individual's chances of an appropriate
job-to-education match. In terms of earnings consequences,
the study concludes that years of overeducation do increase
wages for immigrants, but much less so than years of
adequate education. This is also true for native Danes, but
the relative penalty for overeducation is much larger for
immigrants than for Danes. |
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