Youth Jobs, Skill and Educational Mismatches in Africa

Morsy, Hanan and Mukasa, Adamon (2019): Youth Jobs, Skill and Educational Mismatches in Africa. Published in: Working Papers Series, African Development Bank No. 326

Abstract

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the incidence of skill and educational mismatches of African youth and explores the linkages between job mismatch and wages, job satisfaction, and on-thejob search. It uses school-to-work transition survey datasets from 10 African countries and controls for unobserved heterogeneity, sample selection bias and endogeneity problems during the estimation of job mismatch. Results show that skill and educational mismatches are prevalent in Africa: 17.5% of employed youth are overskilled, 28.9% underskilled, 8.3% overeducated and 56.9% undereducated. Our estimation results reveal that overskilling and overeducation are associated with a wage penalty and undereducation leads to a wage premium. In addition, both overskilling and overeducation reduce job satisfaction and increase youth’s likelihood of on-job search. Our pseudopanel approach also suggests that skill and educational mismatches of youth are persistent over time and skill-mismatched youth are more likely to transition to better-matched jobs than youth with inadequate education. Finally, our results show that unemployment has a scarring effect for underskilled youth and both a scarring effect and a stepping-stone effect for overskilled and overeducated youth. The findings have important policy implications on how to address the persistent skill and educational mismatches among employed African youth.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Youth, skill mismatch, educational mismatch, wage penalty, Africa
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I21 - Analysis of Education; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J24 - Human Capital ; Skills ; Occupational Choice ; Labor Productivity; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J28 - Safety ; Job Satisfaction ; Related Public Policy; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs > J31 - Wage Level and Structure ; Wage Differentials

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