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‘Mind the mismatch?’ Incidence, drivers, and persistence of African youths' skill and educational mismatches
Author(s) -
Morsy Hanan,
Mukasa Adamon N.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
african development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-8268
pISSN - 1017-6772
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8268.12478
Subject(s) - persistence (discontinuity) , matching (statistics) , unemployment , youth unemployment , demographic economics , incidence (geometry) , psychology , perspective (graphical) , quality (philosophy) , economics , economic growth , medicine , computer science , philosophy , physics , geotechnical engineering , optics , epistemology , pathology , artificial intelligence , engineering
This paper examines the incidence, drivers, and persistence of skill and educational mismatches among employed youths from 10 African countries surveyed between 2012 and 2015. Results indicate that, unlike most findings from developed countries, underskilling and undereducation are more prevalent among the youth than overskilling and overeducation. The levels of education of the youth and their parents, the field of study, the quality of job and the firm size are found to be key predictors of job mismatches. Our results also show that the perspective of unemployment has a scarring effect for underskilled youths but a stepping‐stone effect for overskilled and overeducated. Using a pseudo‐panel approach, skill and educational mismatches of youths are found to be persistent over time and the likelihood of transitioning into education matching jobs is significantly increasing with the levels of education.