Job satisfaction and the individual educational level, re-assessing their relationship

We examine the factors that shape job satisfaction and in particular, the direct and indirect effects of the educational level. Our motivation is based on extending a large body of researches that is focused on private sector data by employing a larger and widely heterogeneous set of micro-data and by including non-linear effects and indirect effects of education. Our dataset includes 25 countries and it comes from the 2007 survey carried out by the International Social Survey Program. We estimate a probit model which includes country-effects in order to control for specific environmental factors. Findings indicate that job satisfaction is negatively related to being male, living in a big city, the number of worked hours per week, and not being self-employed. We also find that age registers a non-linear impact and we provide evidence that individual educational level shows a positive effect but with a decreasing growth rate and also an indirect effect through earned income.