The gender gap in educational mismatch: evidence from the Dominican Republic

Abstract

In this paper we test the existence of gender gaps in educational mismatch for a developing country (Dominican Republic), an interesting case study due to its recent policies of education promotion, which achieved an important increase in enrolment rates at all levels of schooling, particularly for women. We use recent microdata to distinguish between over and undereducation, finding asymmetric effects by gender, particularly harmful for women. Various matching techniques based on propensity score methods were implemented in order to evaluate the impact of the over and under education index on earnings.