Immigrant Overeducation across Generations: The Role of Gender and Part-Time Work

A large body of literature shows that first-generation immigrants born in developing countries experience a higher likelihood of being overeducated than natives (i.e. immigrant overeducation). However, evidence is remarkably scarce when it comes to the overeducation of second-generation immigrants. Using a matched employer-employee database for Belgium over the period 1999-2016 and generalized ordered logit regressions, we contribute to the literature with one of the first studies on the intergenerational nexus between overeducation and origin among tertiary-educated workers. We show that immigrant overeducation disappears across two generations when workers work full-time. However, immigrant overeducation is a persistent intergenerational phenomenon when workers work part-time. Our gender-interacted estimates endorse these findings for female and male immigrants.