Using large samples of persons born in 1985, we investigate the relationship between characteristics of the neighborhood where young people lived as adolescents and the probability that they will receive social assistance when aged 19, 20, and 21, for the three Swedish metropolitan regions-Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo. We estimated logistic regressions separately for the majority population and "visible immigrants" and included several characteristics of the neighborhood and of the parental home in the specification. The probability of social assistance receipt as a young adult is strongly positively linked to social assistance receipt in the parental home and to several other factors. The major result is that the association with social assistance receipt in the neighborhood where a person lived at age 16 remains strong when parental receipt and a number of other neighborhood characteristics are controlled for. We conclude that measures to increase the education qualifications and various efforts to create jobs for young adults have the potential to decrease social assistance receipt among young adults. In addition, there is also room for spatially focused measures aiming to reduce residential segregation and the demand for social assistance in locations with a comparably high rate of social assistance receipt.

In this paper, we investigate to what degree young adults live in neighbourhoods that are similar, in terms of relative average household income, to the neighbourhoods in which they grew up. We use regression analysis on register data for all individuals who were born in 1974 and lived in metropolitan Sweden in both 1990 and 2006. During this period, the distribution of income in Sweden became far more unequal, unemployment rose dramatically, earlier housing policies were dismantled, the share of ‘visible minorities’ increased dramatically, and residential segregation increased very considerably. We find a correlation between average neighbourhood incomes at these two points in the sample's life cycle of 0.44, which is more than three times as high as the household income correlation. We also find that half of the children of ‘visible minorities’ grew up in the poorer quartile of neighbourhoods, and of these, almost two-thirds remained in the poorest quartile of neighbourhoods as adults. Several measures indicate that intergenerational persistency in context is lower in metropolitan Sweden than was found in a similar study in the US. However, it appears that if visible minority individuals lived in a neighbourhood in the lowest part of the distribution in Sweden as a child, the probability that they will do so also as adults is as high as the corresponding probability for an African-American person in the US.

Using large samples of persons born in 1985 we investigate the relationship between theneighbourhood where young people grew up and the probability that they will receive socialassistance when aged 19 to 21, for the three Swedish metropolitan regions - Stockholm,Gothenburg and Malmö. We also investigate to what extent use of social assistance receiptand other parental characteristics affect the probability of social assistance receipt as a youngadult. Logistic regressions are estimated for the majority population and “visible minorities”.A main result is that the rate of social assistance receipt in the neighbourhood has a sizableeffect on the probability of receiving social assistance as a young adult. We discuss severalpossible explanations for this. We also find that the probability of receiving social assistanceis negatively correlated with having completed secondary school and positively correlatedwith having become a young mother. The probability of social assistance receipt is stronglypositively linked to social assistance receipt in the parental home and negatively linked toincome in the parental home. Having parents with long educations decreases the probabilityof receipt for the majority population while among “visible minorities” it does not thoughreceipt decreases by year since immigration.

In high-income countries, not completing secondary school often entails a high risk of social exclusion. Using data on young adults born in 1985 who grew up in metropolitan Sweden, we study factors associated with not graduating from upper-secondary school at age 21. Our hypothesis is that if a young person sees examples of people who are not able to earn a living despite having a long education, such negative examples are influential. Results from estimated logistic models are consistent with the hypothesis.

The purpose of this paper is to follow the development of the Swedish gender earnings gap through the 1980s and 1990s. We follow the changes in the wage gap and in factors to which it can be related, step-by-step, and year-by- year. This is done by analysing cross sectional data from statistics Sweden (HINK) for the years 1981, 1983-1991 and 1993-1998. The preliminary results show that the unadjusted wage gap varied between 15-20 percent up to 1989 when the differentials began to increase. During the 90s the size of the gap was around 25 percent. There is an increase in the wage differentials between the 1980s and late 1990s. In a decomposition analysis we find that the measured differences in jobs and qualifications between women and men can account only for between two and three fifths of the gender wage gap, if they are assumed to be rewarded according to the wage function for men. If the female wage function is applied, considerably less of the differentials are explained. Differences in the educational requirements for jobs have contributed considerably to gender earnings inequality. The impact has, however, decreased over the period studied and is about half as large in the 1990s as it was in the 1980s.

The purpose of this article is to follow the development of the Swedish gender earnings gap through the 1980s and 1990s. We follow the changes in the wage gap and in factors to which it can be related year-by-year by analysing crosssectional data from Statistics Sweden (HEK) for the years 1981 and 198398. The results show that the unadjusted wage gap varied between 12 and 15 per cent of the average male wage up to 1989, when the differentials began to increase. During the 1990s the size of the gap was around 1418 per cent. In a decomposition analysis we find that the measured differences in jobs and qualifications between women and men can account only for between two-fifths and three-fifths of the gender wage gap, if they are assumed to be rewarded according to the male wage function. If the female wage function is applied, even less of the differentials are explained. Differences in the educational requirements for jobs have contributed considerably to gender earnings inequality. The impact has decreased over the period studied, however, and is about half as large in the 1990s as it was in the 1980s

Male and female wage-equations are estimated from survey-data from the city of Taganrog in 1989, the first such estimates on data collected in the USSR. Reductions in working hours for low-paid female professionals, resulting in relatively high hourly rates, encouraged women to acquire higher education, while maintaining an unequal and conservative gender division of labour. Decomposition of the wage gap shows strong indications of discrimination. A wage-function estimated from the pooled sample (as in Oaxaca and Ransom, 1994) ‘explains’ a larger share of the gender gap, but does so because it disregards aspects of discrimination.

Using unique survey data from the Russian industrial city Taganrog in 1989 and 1998, we analyse changes in the gender division of labour among gainfully employed women and men, pre- and post-transition. In Soviet Taganrog, dual earner families predominated, but nevertheless men were usually primary earners, while women did the bulk of housework. After transition, contrary to early predictions, aggregate female and male employment rates have declined to a similar extent but the time-use data indicate increased gender specialisation among the employed .Thus, the dual earner norm mainly remains but the pre-existing gender difference within it has increased considerably, particularly among couples with pre-school children

Abstract: The paper discusses the effect of economic reforms on gender differences in participation rates and earnings in Russia in the early 1990s. Besides national statistics it uses survey data from the city Taganrog, 1989 and 1993/9. Although local, these repeated cross sections provide unique comparable data from Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Results agree with national statistics in that participation has decreased and unemployment increased for both men and women. The female/male earnings ratio fell from 66% in 1989, to 61% in 1993, at a moment when real wages for the men too have decreased dramatically. Oaxaca-decompostions of the gender gap indicate that,

in both years, the greater part is due to differential rewards but that gender differences in hours worked contribute more to the wage gap 1993 than in Soviet times.

Det är vanligare att kvinnor har en högre utbildning än vad som typiskt krävs för deras yrke (överutbildning), medan män i högre utsträckning än kvinnor har en lägre utbildning än vad som typiskt krävs för deras yrke (underutbildning). I denna studie undersöker vi i vilken utsträckning denna över- och under-utbildning påverkar könslönegapet och skillnader i utbildningsavkastning i Sverige mellan 1993 och 2002.

Resultaten visar att över- och underutbildning bidrar betydligt mer till köns-löneskillnaderna än traditionella humankapitalvariabler, som utbildningsnivå och arbetslivserfarenhet. I dekomponeringar minskar över- och underutbild-ningsvariabler könslönegapet med mellan en tiondel och en sjättedel, vilket är mellan en tredjedel och hälften av vad könssegregeringen på arbetsmarknaden förklarar. Det är med andra ord viktigt att ta hänsyn till över- och under-utbildning när könslöneskillnader analyseras. Resultatet att kvinnor har lägre avkastning på utbildning än män kvarstår dock

We investigate skill mismatch and its impact on gender differences in wage gap and in returns to education in Sweden 1993 to 2002.Women are more likely to have more formal education than what is normally required for their occupation (overeducation), while men are more likely to have less (undereducation).Over- and undereducation contribute far more to the gender wage gap than years of schooling and work experience. In decompositions, adjusting for skill mismatch decreases the gender wage gap by between one tenth and one sixth. This is roughly a third to a half as much as is accounted for by segregation by industry. Thus, taking skill mismatch into account is essential for the analysis of gender wage differentiation, even though it does not alter the result that the estimated returns to education are smaller for women than for men in Sweden.Keywords: Gender differentials, discrimination, over- and undereducationJEL-codes: J16, J24, J31, J71

I två nyutkomna rapporter från Svenskt Näringsliv och Handelns Utredningsinstitut hävdas att den främsta orsaken till ojämlikheten mellan män och kvinnor på svensk arbetsmarknad är att så många kvinnor arbetar för en arbetsgivare utan konkurrens, ”den offentliga sektorns monopol”. Slutsatsen fi ck stort genomslag i massmedia, trots att rapporten inte lyckas underbygga den. Författarna utgår helt enkelt från att det större deltidsarbetet i offentlig sektor orsakas av större diskriminering och att det därför är riktigt att jämföra inkomster från heltids- och deltidsarbete utan hänsyn till arbetstid. Därigenom fi nner de inkomstskillnader som de tar som bevis för större diskriminering i offentlig sektor.

idigare forskning har påvisat diskriminering av invandrare vid anställning, att invandrare har lägre löner än jämförbara infödda och att högutbildade invandrare oftare än infödda har arbeten som inte kräver högre utbildning. Vi undersöker om detta gäller även för invandrare som kommit till Sverige som barn och alltså har fått sin högsta utbildning i Sverige. Vi finner att de trots detta har lägre lön och lägre utbildningsavkastning än anställda med Sverige­födda föräldrar. I båda dessa avseenden missgynnas i synnerhet de från Afrika, Asien och Latinamerika. Barn från “arbetskraftsinvandringsländer” som Turkiet och Sydeuropa har också lägre lön än jämförbara infödda men inte lägre utbildningsavkastning. Att ha högre utbildning än yrket normalt kräver är vanligare bland barndomsinvandrarna än bland infödda men har mindre betydelse för löneskillnaden än den låga utbildningsavkastningen.

We analyse full-time monthly wages of employees with parents born in Sweden and of childhood immigrants who arrived before the end of compulsory school-age. We use a detailed disaggregation of background countries, which shows considerable hetero­geneity, in overeducation, in returns to education and in birth-country coefficients, unexplained by wage models. Both the non-European childhood immigrants and of those from Southern Europe suffer a wage disadvantage relative to natives, men to a larger extent than women. Returns to education are generally lower for non-European childhood immigrants than for natives. Comparison with workers, who immigrated as adults, shows that the childhood immigrants of most nationalities run lower risk of being overeducated and have a smaller wage disadvantage. The child/adult immigrant difference is larger, the larger the disadvantage of the adult immigrants from a country of origin. But for male childhood immigrants from some of the labour transmitter countries, the risk of overeducation is larger than it is for adult immigrants and the difference in adjusted wages between childhood immigrants and adult immigrants also tends to be smaller than for other countries of origin.

We analyse full-time monthly wages of employees with parents born in Sweden and of childhood immigrants who arrived before the end of compulsory school-age. We use a detailed disaggregation of background countries, which shows considerable hetero­geneity, in overeducation, in returns to education and in birth-country coefficients, unexplained by wage models. Both the non-European childhood immigrants and of those from Southern Europe suffer a wage disadvantage relative to natives, men to a larger extent than women. Returns to education are generally lower for non-European childhood immigrants than for natives. Comparison with workers, who immigrated as adults, shows that the childhood immigrants of most nationalities run lower risk of being overeducated and have a smaller wage disadvantage. The child/adult immigrant difference is larger, the larger the disadvantage of the adult immigrants from a country of origin. But for male childhood immigrants from some of the labour transmitter countries, the risk of overeducation is larger than it is for adult immigrants and the difference in adjusted wages between childhood immigrants and adult immigrants also tends to be smaller than for other countries of origin.