Educational Mismatch and Gender: A Comparison between Industry and Services in Spain

Abstract

This study analysed the presence and influence of educational mismatch in the service and industry sectors in Spain, due to the lack of studies of this phenomenon in the latter sector. We also analyse its effect on wages and its role in creating a gender wage gap in the returns to a set of professional and personal characteristics. The heterogeneity in the improvement of workers’ qualifications between sectors in Spain and the lack of studies of this phenomenon in the industrial sector motivates interest in this comparative research between industry and services, which includes a gender perspective, given the interest of this topic in wage studies. To this end, an extension of the Mincer wage equation was applied to data from the 2018 Wages Structure Survey conducted by the Spanish National Statistics Institute. The results suggest that educational mismatch has a greater impact on women’s wages in the service sector than on those in the industrial sector and on men’s wages in both sectors. We also found wage differences in the returns to a set of professional and personal characteristics that suggest that the gender wage gap is greater in the service sector than in the industrial sector.