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This paper contributes to the literature on overeducation by empirically investigating the wage penalty of job-education mismatch among Ph.D. holders who completed their studies in Italy; a country where the number of new doctoral recipients has dramatically increased over recent years while personnel employed in R&D activities is still below the European average. We use cross-sectional micro-data collected in 2009 and rely on different definitions of education-job mismatch such as, overeducation, overskilling and dissatisfaction with the use of skills. We find that overeducation and skills dissatisfaction are associated with significantly lower wages but there is no wage penalty from overskilling. Furthermore, those who simultaneously report overeducation and skills dissatisfaction experience a particularly high wage penalty.

This paper contributes to the literature on overeducation by empirically investigating the wage penalty of job-education mismatch among Ph.D. holders who completed their studies in Italy; a country where the number of new doctoral recipients has dramatically increased over recent years while personnel employed in R&D activities is still below the European average. We use cross-sectional micro-data collected in 2009 and rely on different definitions of education-job mismatch such as, overeducation, overskilling and dissatisfaction with the use of skills. We find that overeducation and skills dissatisfaction are associated with significantly lower wages but there is no wage penalty from overskilling. Furthermore, those who simultaneously report overeducation and skills dissatisfaction experience a particularly high wage penalty.

Although social capital has been hypothesized to have positive influence on psychological health, a relationship between social capital dimensions and psychological wellbeing has rarely been found. This longitudinal study investigates the relationship between social participation in associations and self-rated psychological health. The paper uses five waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from 1991 to 1995 (unbalanced panel N=45,761). Ordered logit fixed effect methods were used to study the longitudinal link between structural social capital (being a member, active, and both a member and active in associations) and self-rated psychological health assessed by single items of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) controlling for age, marital status, household size, number of children, education, income, economic status, number of visits to the GP and health problems. The paper shows that being only a member and only active in associations has no statistical relationship with almost all the items of the GHQ-12. Instead, being both a member and active in associations is linked to all “positive” items of self-rated psychological health and to two main “negative” items of psychological wellbeing. These findings highlight the protective role of being both a member and active in associations against poor psychological health outcomes., Highlights • The manuscript investigates the effects of social participation in associations on self-rated psychological health. • The paper uses five waves of the British Household Panel Survey from 1991 to 1995. • It utilizes single items of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). • It employs ordered logit fixed effect methods. • It finds that being both a member and active in associations matters for psychological health.