Overeducation of University Graduates and Social Mobility

Is the overqualification of graduates related to social background? To answer this question, five indicators are developed in this paper: objective, subjective and statistical indicators common to this kind of research, and two from the PIAAC dataset, statistical overqualification in literacy and numeracy. The results are not conclusive as a relationship is observed between objective and subjective overqualification, but not the remaining indicators. From a social mobility approach, we found that once level of education is taken into account, social background has little effect on the probability of achieving a highly skilled occupation. Put another way, social origin shows an intense relationship with educational attainment, but the relationship between level of education and occupation is weaker.