Olof Bäckman

Welfare trends in Sweden: balancing the books for the 1990s

Welfare trends in Sweden: balancing the books for the 1990s : Journal of European Social Policy

Social background and life-course risks as determinants of social assistance receipt among young adults in Sweden, Norway and Finland

We analyse the determinants of social assistance receipt among young adults in three Nordic countries, focusing on social-background and life-course events during early adulthood. We ask whether they are related differently to short-term and long-term receipt. Short-term poverty could be more individualized than long-term poverty which can be expected to be more strongly related to social background. We applied generalized ordinal logit modelling to longitudinal register-based data. Both social-background and life-course factors were found to be important, but our results did not confirm the hypothesis of social background predicting mostly long-term receipt and life-course factors predicting mostly short-term receipt. Leaving the parental home early and parental social assistance receipt were important determinants of social assistance receipt, and both factors predicted longer duration of receipt as well. We found some differences between the countries, which may be related to differences in youth unemployment and social welfare systems.

Escaping welfare? Social assistance dynamics in Sweden

The article analyses temporal patterns in social assistance receipt in Sweden in the 2000s by looking at which circumstances facilitate versus reduce the possibilities of a person ceasing to be a recipient of social assistance. The analysis is guided by the following questions: What conditions lead people to terminate periods of social assistance receipt? Which factors are central to exits with different subsequent income patterns? How do these explain the different situations of recipients prior to termination? We focus particularly on income maintenance prior to spells of social assistance. We use event history data on monthly social assistance take-up covering the total adult Swedish population for the years 2002–2004. We adopt a gamma mixture model to control for unobserved heterogeneity. The results suggest that previous experience of both employment and social assistance receipt are important determinants for all types of exits from social assistance recipiency. A negative duration dependence is found also when unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for.

Long-term consequences of being not in employment, education or training as a young adult. Stability and change in three Swedish birth cohorts

ABSTRACT In this article we analyse the development of young adults not in education, employment or training (NEET) in three complete Swedish birth cohorts born in 1975, 1980 and 1985. We analyse the risk for future labour-market exclusion among NEETs, and how this risk varies between three birth cohorts who made the transition from school to work during periods characterised by different opportunity structures for young adults. Analyses using propensity score matching with repeated outcomes show that belonging to the NEET-group in early adulthood has an independent effect on the development of subsequent labour-market risk for both men and women. Moreover, this effect increases across the cohorts. The fact that the degree of labour-market attachment has clear and long-lasting implications indicates that the problems associated with being NEET cannot be reduced to a transient phase. Rather, it seems as though being NEET may be both a step on an already unfavourable life career and a triggering factor for social exclusion.

Offending, drug abuse and life chances—a longitudinal study of a Stockholm birth cohort

There are many factors, both empirical and theoretical, which indicate that drug abuse can play an important role in explaining the links between criminality and life chances when viewed from a life-course perspective. In this article, we examine the links between crime and drug abuse and social inclusion and exclusion in adult life, and look at whether there are gender-specific patterns in these regards. The Stockholm Birth Cohort database allows us to follow a birth cohort born in 1953 to age 56. The results show that drug abuse is central both to processes of continuity in and desistance from crime and to life chances in adulthood. For the adult outcomes that relate to work and health, we also note a tendency towards polarization; the size of both the relative and the absolute differences between the comparison group and offenders with registered drug abuse increases over time. The same general pattern can be seen for males and females.

Early school leaving in Scandinavia: Extent and labour market effects

The article explores the extent to which the organization of vocational tracks in upper secondary school affects the labour market risks associated with early school exit. The Nordic countries share many features, but the upper secondary school systems differ significantly in how their vocational tracks are organized. Denmark and Norway have dual vocational tracks, that is, they combine school-based education and workplace apprenticeships, whereas in Finland and Sweden they are primarily school based. We analyse administrative longitudinal data from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s in the four countries and find the highest vocational track dropout rates in Norway and the lowest in Finland. The results indicate that the relative labour market effect of dropping out from a vocational track is most detrimental in Norway. It is also in Norway that we find the greatest gender differences in this respect.

Openness to Gender Atypical Occupations in Youth Do Peer Groups and School Classes Matter

The article analyses aspects of gender composition and social dominance in peer groups and school classes and their effects on the degree of openness to gender-atypical occupations in young adolescents. The data set used contains information for some 13,000 girls and boys living in Stockholm in the early 1960s. Results from multi-level regressions show that gender composition is significantly related to openness to gender-atypical occupations at peer-group level only. As the causal direction of this relationship can be questioned, the result should be interpreted with caution. Concerning aspects of dominance, quite substantive effects on individual openness to gender-atypical occupations are found for girls, albeit not for boys. Thus, for girls, the degree of openness to gender-atypical occupations of the most central girl in the school class significantly affects the degree of openness to gender-atypical occupations of individual girls in that school class.

High School Dropout, Resource Attainment, and Criminal Convictions

Objectives: To examine the effect of high school dropout on subsequent criminal convictions and how postdropout resource attainment in terms of education and employment may modify such an effect. Methods: Propensity score matching (PSM) using administrative register data covering two full Swedish birth cohorts is employed to assess the effect of dropout on convictions. Event history analysis is used to examine the modifying effect of subsequent resource attainment. Results: The PSM analysis reveals an effect of dropout on convictions for men, whereas no evidence of such an effect is found for women. Returning to school after dropout significantly reduces the crime-inducing effect of dropout among men. Finding occupation after dropout also reduces the risk for criminal conviction but does so independently of the effect of dropout. Conclusion: Since resource attainment after the dropout event modifies the effect on criminal convictions, it is concluded that policies such as lifelong learning strategies promoting opportunities for a “second chance” may, besides their intended consequences, also have crime preventive side effects.

Att möta globaliseringen

De nordiska landernas ekonomiska utbyte med omvarlden har okat dramatiskt. I debatten har globaliseringens foresprakare sett internationellt utbyte som en forutsattning for fortsatt valstand, medan ...

Review Essay : Mathematics Matters: On the Absence of Mathematical Models in Quantitative Sociology

Mathematics can be helpful in practically all of sociology, especially in quantitative empirical sociology. Mathematics, in general, introduces logic, simplicity and elegance into the analysis. In particular, mathematics is a fundamental base for statistical modeling. In this brief article, we do not illustrate all of the virtues that mathematics has. However, we do use a few examples to indicate how empirical research can indeed be improved by the use of mathematics. What chiefly concerns us in this paper is not the lack of mathematics in sociology as a rule, but rather the lack of mathematics in quantitative sociological analysis. Although the roots of mathematical sociology can be traced back more than a hundred years ( for a short history and overview, see Sorensen & Sorensen 19 7 51. Lazarsfeld’s Mathematical Thil1kirzg in the Social Scie1lces ( 19 5q 1 has been dated as the beginning of the modern