This paper addresses the issue of overeducation and undereducation using for the first time a British dataset which contains explicit information on the level of required education to enter a job across the generality of occupations. Three key issues within the overeducation literature are addressed. First, what determines the existence of over and undereducation and to what extent are over and undereducation substitutes for experience, tenure and training? Second, to what extent are over and undereducation temporary or permanent phenomena? Third, what are the returns to over and undereducation and do certain stylized facts discovered for the US and a number of European countries hold for Britain?

This paper uses a survey of graduates from two cohort years (1985 and 1990) to examine the determinants of overeducation in the UK. We determine whether or not graduates are matched in jobs for which degrees are required. Longitudinal comparisons up to 11 years after graduation permit examination of how the matching process alters over time. The implications of mismatch for job satisfaction and earnings over the career cycle are traced. We find that cross-sectional measures of mismatch obscure significant changes for individuals over time; that the speed of movement into and out of matched work is important; and that both job satisfaction and earnings are significantly adversely affected by mismatch.

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This article examines the effects of housing tenure on individuals' job and unemployment durations in the UK. We examine job to job transitions and transitions from unemployment. We take account of whether or not the arrival of a job was synonymous with a non-local residential move, tenure endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity. We find that home-ownership is a constraint for the employed and public renting is more of a constraint for the unemployed. Employed home-owners have a lower transition into employment with a distant move and unemployed public renters have a lower probability of gaining employment in more distant labour markets. Copyright � 2008 The Author(s).

Using data from two cohorts of graduates, this article examines three aspects of over-education. First, using three new measures, we present an estimate of graduate over-education in the UK. We find that the scale of over-education varies with measurement techniques, with weak correlations between the three measures. Second, across the three measures we estimate the effects of over-education on earnings and job satisfaction. The effects of over-education on earnings and job satisfaction are similar, not withstanding the measures identifying different individuals as being over-educated. One finding is that the effects of being over-educated are more significant for female graduates than male, although it is ambiguous which gender is more prone to over-education. Third, we examine another source of ambiguity regarding over-education, namely that firms upgrade the tasks they allocate to their employees who appear to be over-educated. We find that, for graduates, job quality for the over-educated is not converging to that of the appropriately educated.