Unequal Opportunities and social capital (original) (raw)
Related papers
The income gap between natives and second generation immigrants in Sweden: is skill the explanation?
Centre for Research and Analysis of …, 2007
This is the first study to use an achievement test score to analyze whether the income gap between second-generation immigrants and natives is caused by a skill gap rather than ethnic discrimination. Since, in principle, every male Swedish citizen takes the test when turning 18, we are able to bring more evidence to bear on the matter by estimating the income gap for a very large sample of individuals who are of the same age and have the same years of schooling at the test date. Once the result of the Swedish Military Enlistment Test is controlled for, the income gap almost disappears for second generation immigrants with both parents born in Southern Europe or outside Europe. However, when using a regular set of control variables the income gap becomes overestimated. This difference in results is most likely explained by the fact that schooling is a bad measure of productive skills for these groups of second-generation immigrants. It indicates that they compensate for their lower probability of being employed by investing in (in relation to their skill level) more schooling than otherwise similar natives.
Income Gap between Natives and Second Generation Immigrants in Sweden: Is Skill the Explanation?
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2007
The Income Gap Between Natives and Second Generation Immigrants in Sweden: Is Skill the Explanation? * This is the first study to use an achievement test score to analyze whether the income gap between second-generation immigrants and natives is caused by a skill gap rather than ethnic discrimination. Since, in principle, every male Swedish citizen takes the test when turning 18, we are able to bring more evidence to bear on the matter by estimating the income gap for a very large sample of individuals who are of the same age and have the same years of schooling at the test date. Once the result of the Swedish Military Enlistment Test is controlled for, the income gap almost disappears for second generation immigrants with both parents born in Southern Europe or outside Europe. However, when using a regular set of control variables the income gap becomes overestimated. This difference in results is most likely explained by the fact that schooling is a bad measure of productive skills for these groups of second-generation immigrants. It indicates that they compensate for their lower probability of being employed by investing in (in relation to their skill level) more schooling than otherwise similar natives.
Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2009
This study uses a cognitive test score, the Swedish Military Enlistment test taken at age 18, to identify whether the ethnic employment and income gap in Sweden is caused by a pre-market skill gap and/or ethnic discrimination. The employment gap and income gap are estimated for males born in Sweden with different ethnic backgrounds: their parents were born in Sweden or in southern Europe or outside Europe. Controlling for the cognitive test score does not affect the ethnic employment gap, and for incomes the ethnic income gap almost disappears.
Unequal Opportunities for Young People with Immigrant Backgrounds in the Swedish Labour Market
This paper investigates labour-market performance for 'young people with immigrant backgrounds' and those 'born in Sweden with native-born parents' in the Swedish labour market. It focuses on young people who were aged 18-20 during 1990, and their labour-market status after 8 years, in 1998. The results indicate that young people of immigrant descent have lower annual wage income and are at higher risk of not being employed than those born in Sweden with nativeborn parents. Differences in human capital characteristics cannot explain these results. Other theories, which stress the effect of discriminatory behaviour and the power of social network composition, are discussed as alternative interpretations. Having one native-born parent is considered to be important to labour market success. However, having a native-born father rather than a native-born mother is associated with better labour-market achievement.
The authors propose a strategy for observing and explaining workplace variance in categorically linked inequalities. Using Swedish economy-wide linked employer-employee panel data, the authors examine variation in workplace wage inequalities between native Swedes and non-Western immigrants. Consistent with relational inequality theory, the authors' findings are that immigrant-native wage gaps vary dramatically across workplaces, even net of strong human capital controls. The authors also find that, net of observed and fixed-effect controls for individual traits, workplace immigrant-native wage gaps decline with increased workplace immigrant employment and managerial representation and increase when job segregation rises. These results are stronger in high-inequality workplaces and for white-collar employees: contexts in which one expects status-based claims on organizational resources, the central causal mechanism identified by relational inequality theory, to be stronger. The authors conclude that workplace variation in the non-Western immigrant-native wage gaps is contingent on organizational variation in the relative power of groups and the institutional context in which that power is exercised. Sociologists have long recognized that workplaces are the primary site for the generation and distribution of earnings inequalities ðBaron and Bielby
Social capital and immigrants' labour market performance
Papers in Regional Science, 2014
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Effect of immigration on Sweden natives' wages : The post-secondary and post-graduate case
2014
Immigration has increased in Sweden during the last decade; increasing from 64,087 immigrants in 2001 to 113,117 in 2012. This trend has become an important topic for politicians, policy makers and the academic community, who concern about the effect of immigration over the native population in Sweden. The aim of our paper is to focus on the most educated immigrants, so we choose to study the impact of post-secondary graduate and postgraduate immigrant workers. Following this issue our paper asks the following question: has immigration affected positively or negatively native workers' wages in a specific education-experience cohort in the primary counties in Sweden from 2001 to 2012? To give an answer to this question we categorize workers into experience-education groups in the primary counties in Sweden for the period between 2001 and 2012. We use the classification groups in a three-level CES production function specification; the CES specification helps us to calculate the elasticity of substitution across experience classes and across education groups. These estimates enable us to calculate the factor price elasticties, the percent change in the log average monthly wage due to a percent change in the supply of immigrant workers. The factor price elasticties imply a negative effect of immigration over the log average monthly wages for natives in Sweden in the period between 2001 and 2012.
Sustainability, 2021
In a globalised world with an increasing division of labour, the competition for highly skilled individuals—regardless of their origin—is growing, as is the value of such individuals for national economies. Yet the majority of studies analysing the economic integration of immigrants shows that those who are highly skilled also have substantial hurdles to overcome: their employment rates and salaries are lower and they face a higher education-to-occupation mismatch compared to highly skilled natives. This paper contributes to the paucity of studies on the employment patterns of highly skilled immigrants to Sweden by providing an overview of the socio-demographic characteristics, labour-market participation and occupational mobility of highly educated migrants in Sweden. Based on a statistical analysis of register data, we compare their employment rates, salaries and occupational skill level and mobility to those of immigrants with lower education and with natives. The descriptive ana...