Refugee's Income Sources during Their First 15 Years in Sweden

Andreas Raneke, Statistics Sweden
Lena Lundkvist , Statistics Sweden

Much is known about the labour market situation among the foreign-born population in Sweden. Yet, most studies have investigated one event at a time, such as from unemployment to employment at a specific time since immigration. The analysis of a sequence of several transitions at once is relatively less common. Detailed individual-level longitudinal data is used to investigate how persons who immigrated as refugees made a living during their first 15 years in Sweden. Differences in trajectories by sex, age at immigration and level of education among others, are also explored. Register data on all those who immigrated as refugees in the ages 18–49 between 1997 and 2001 was followed for 15 years, in total 30 600 persons. Cluster analysis is used to identify the most common trajectories concerning among nine different income patterns and logistic regression to present odds ratios for the risk to follow different pathways. Six typical pathways have been identified from the cluster analysis, two are characterized by those who quickly joins the workforce and those having a prolonged period without employment. Those who immigrated at younger ages or tertiary educated are most likely to follow the first path. There are no differences between the sexes concerning following the first path but men are overrepresented in the second. The joint analysis of several events over a long time period provides a rich picture of the transition between different income sources with would not have been possible with the analysis of a single event.

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 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy