we have written a lot about mismatch in terms of qualifications. While there are many reasons why people study (e.g. intrinsic reasons, love of subject, better fun than working) it is surely favourable if one's qualifications are useful when you are out in the working world. A further aspect of this is whether your qualifications are useful abroad.
Alan Barrett and colleagues at the ESRI have done some good work over the years looking at the integration of immigrants in to the Irish economy. The bulk of their work has shown that immigrants dont tend to achieve occupational levels consistent with their qualifications. This is potentially a market failure. The latest paper on this is below.
here
3 comments:
The authors control for age and education, but it would have been useful if they also controlled for English language proficiency. It could be argued that inability to speak English is what prevents immigrants from matching into their preferred occupations, rather than market failure.
true, and probably other unobserved factors could have played a part. if it just language proficiency, then surely that would not be difficult to correct, certainly cheaper than the kind of wage differentials implied by the studies.
There is also a problem of uncertainty about qualifications:who knows what a degree from the universities of Wryclycz or Woolamalloo is worth [aside from the latter's famed philosophy department]? Employers presumably play safe. I don't think there is good data on language proficiency on migrants here - we badly need another Adult Literacy Survey, over-sampling the "New Irish".
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