Skilled Migrants in the Swedish Labour Market: An Analysis of Employment, Income and Occupational Status (original) (raw)
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Genus
Swedish register data include a number of variables related to individuals’ educational level. In contrast to many other countries, the registers even include information on the education obtained by immigrants outside Sweden. For studies on immigrants’ labour market integration, this is an important asset. However, the quality of data in terms of the source and extent of data coverage for different migrant groups is less well-known. This explorative paper investigates the sources of information for immigrants’ educational levels, and examines the time taken until their education is registered for different migrant groups. Employing register data on immigrants who arrived in Sweden in the period 2000–2016, the methods include a descriptive analysis of the main sources of educational attainment, and event history analysis to estimate survival rates for not being in the educational registers. The results indicate that the ‘survey of foreign-born’ and the Swedish Public Employment Serv...
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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.