The returns to education and wage penalty from overeducation: New evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

This study intends to estimate the rate of returns to education in Vietnam, the distributive effects of education on wages, and the wage penalty from the incidence of overeducation in the Vietnamese labor market during 2004–2016. This study employs a pseudo-panel approach to address omitted variables bias and the unconditional quantile regression to identify the heterogeneity of returns to education across the income distribution. Our main finding indicates that the estimated rate of returns to education in Vietnam is approximately 6.5%, showing a downward bias from previous estimates. The returns vary across wage distributions, where a lower rate of return is observed in lower quantiles and a higher rate among those individuals at the higher quantiles. The returns to education have declined since 2008, confirming the oversupply of highly educated workers in the Vietnamese labor market with an estimated wage penalty of 17%. Government assistance measures are needed to reduce the overeducation and the wage penalty issues in the Vietnamese labor market.