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\"We report increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education in Britain, and relate this development to rising overqualification. We distinguish 'Real' and 'Formal' overqualification, according to whether it is accompanied by underutilization of skill. Employees in the former group experience greater, and more sharply rising, pay penalties than those in the latter group. Real Overqualification, but not Formal Overqualification, is associated with job dissatisfaction. While Formal Overqualification has been increasing over time, Real Overqualification has been steady or rising only slowly. The normative implication drawn is that the state should provide regular information on the distribution of the returns to graduate education.\" Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Sekundäranalyse; Längsschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1972 bis 2007. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).

Using vignettes, this study compares employers' assessments of matched and mismatched job applicants in England and the Netherlands. It contributes to the overeducation literature in several ways. First, matching is measured from the perspective of employers, who are better informed about job requirements than employees. Second, overeducated applicants are compared to matched applicants competing for the same job opening. This shift in focus toward applicant pools is necessary to properly test whether over-education is rewarded during the hiring process, the central tenet of job competition theory. Third, vertical and horizontal mismatches are analyzed jointly: This more fine-grained differentiation refines sociological perspectives on credentialism and reveals the complex ways in which employers assign applicants to jobs. Results show that Dutch employers apply more rigid hiring floors and more strongly penalize horizontal mismatches: Compared to England, in the Netherlands, overeducation cannot compensate for the lack of occupation-specific training.

A common theme within the literature on higher education is the congested nature of the graduate labour market. Researchers have highlighted the lengths to which many students now go, in response to this congestion, to 'distinguish themselves' from other graduates: paying increased attention to university status; engaging in a range of extra-curricular activities; and pursuing postgraduate qualifications. Studies that have focused on the strategies of Asian students, specifically, have pointed to the important place of studying abroad as a further strategy in this pursuit of distinction. Given that there is now some evidence that the number of UK students enrolling on a degree programme overseas is increasing, this article explores the extent to which an overseas education can be seen as part of a broader strategy on the part of British students to seek distinction within the labour market and whether such an education does indeed offer tangible employment benefits.

We analyze how the absence behavior of Italian public sector employees has been affected by a law, passed in June 2008, reducing sick leave compensation and increasing monitoring. We use micro data on 889 workers employed in public administration. We find that the employees’ probability of being absent diminishes and that the reduction is greater among employees suffering higher earnings losses. Employees are responsive to the monitoring intensity and to the announcement of policy changes. Females react more strongly. While the reform has increased the hazard of ending an absence spell for short durations, the hazard for long durations decreased.

Policy debates on employability, lifelong learning and competence-based approaches suggest a convergence of VET approaches across European countries. Against the background of the creation of a European Qualifications Framework, this paper compares the VET systems of England, Germany and The Netherlands. The analysis reveals the distinct understandings and meanings of outwardly similar terms. These meanings are deeply rooted in the countries' institutional structures and labour processes and still inform national debates and policies today. The paper identifies a major distinction between a 'knowledge-based' VET model in Germany and The Netherlands and a 'skills-based' model in England. There is a need to develop trans-national categories that take into account the social construction of terms such as 'skills' and 'qualifications'.

Both Rational Action Theory (RAT) and Bourdieu's habitus theory are employed to explain educational decision-making. RAT assumes that decision-making involves cost-benefit analysis, while habitus theory sees educational pathways as shaped by dispositions reflecting familial class of origin. These theories are often seen as conflicting, but we argue that they can fruitfully be used together. Proponents of these theories often employ different methods. RAT advocates usually employ survey data, while those favouring habitus theory often use case studies. If cost-benefit reasoning does partly explain educational decision-making, then we should expect to find evidence of it at the micro-level. Drawing on interviews conducted in Germany and England, we show that young people do indeed talk about their educational choices in ways which fit RAT accounts. Their class-based habitus often, however, provides upper and lower boundaries for their aspirations, thus conditioning the nature of the cost-benefit analysis entering into decision-making.

AimTo examine the effects of tobacco control television advertisements with positive and negative emotional content on adult smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption.DesignAnalysis of monthly cross-sectional surveys using generalised additive models.SettingEngland.Participants60 000 adults aged 18 years or over living in England and interviewed in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey from 2004 to 2010.MeasurementsCurrent smoking status, daily cigarette consumption, tobacco control gross rating points (GRPs—a measure of per capita advertising exposure), cigarette costliness, concurrent tobacco control policies, sociodemographic variables.ResultsAfter adjusting for cigarette costliness, other tobacco control policies and individual characteristics, we found that a 400-point increase in positive emotive GRPs was associated with 7% lower odds of smoking (odds ratio (OR) 0.93, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.98) 1 month later and a similar increase in negative emotive GRPs was significantly associated with 4% lower odds of smoking (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.92 to 0.999) 2 months later. An increase in negative emotive GRPs from 0 to 400 was also associated with a significant 3.3% (95% CI 1.1 to 5.6) decrease in average cigarette consumption. There was no evidence that the association between positive emotive GRPs and the outcomes differed depending on the intensity of negative emotive GRPs (and vice versa).ConclusionsThis is the first study to explore the effects of campaigns with different types of emotive content on adult smoking prevalence and consumption. It suggests that both types of campaign (positive and negative) are effective in reducing smoking prevalence, whereas consumption among smokers was only affected by campaigns evoking negative emotions.

This paper uses register-based panel data to examine over-education amongst immigrants in Denmark. Foreign-educated immigrants are found to be more prone to over-education than both native Danes and immigrants educated in Denmark. Labour market experience reduces this risk, whereas periods of unemployment make a person more likely to accept a job for which he is over-qualified. Over-educated workers earn slightly more than their adequately matched colleagues, but less than if they had been appropriately matched in a higher level job. Foreign-educated immigrants gain the least from over-education.

We give a quantitative analysis of the nature of occupational change - based on the utilisation of skills - as women make the transition between full-time and part-time work. We show that one-quarter of women moving from full- to part-time work experience downgrading. Women remaining with their current employer are less vulnerable and the availability of part-time opportunities is far more important than the presence of a pre-school child in determining whether a woman moves to a lower-skilled occupation. These findings indicate a loss of economic efficiency through the underutilisation of the skills of many of the women who work part-time.

The value that employees attach to the intrinsic aspects of work is important for whether or not job quality issues should have a central place on the social agenda. This article examines whether the importance that British employees attach to intrinsic job quality changed between 1992 and 2006. It uses two nationally representative surveys of employees. It finds no evidence to support the view that there has been a shift towards instrumental job preferences. On the contrary, it shows that intrinsic job preferences rose over the period. The growth in importance of intrinsic orientations is associated with rising levels of education and parental encouragement in education, the improvement of people's jobs with respect to skill, learning opportunities and employee involvement and higher incomes and security.