Abstract
This thesis comprises three different chapters in the broad field of education economics, each making its own contribution in different facets of the topic. The first chapter studies the overeducation wage penalty and how it evolves over time for individuals who are stuck in an overeducated job. Using a Propensity Score Matching estimator, and relying on the panel structure of the data to satisfy the Conditional Independence Assumption, I find that these individuals see their relative position worsen over time, as the penalty follows an increasing trend. In the second chapter we study the effect of Higher Education completion on the mental health of young individuals using the Next Steps dataset. In the absence of a Randomised Control Trial we use different econometric techniques and provide evidence that obtaining a Higher Education degree has a protective effect on the mental health of the respondants. The third and final chapter studies the Gender Pay Gap across the distribution for young recent university graduates using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition complemented with the Recentered Influence Function of Firpo et al. (2009). While finding that differences in fields of studies and related jobs can explain most of the gap until the median earners, I also find evidence of strong glass ceiling effects for women, who suffer a wage gap of around 25% at the top of the distribution.