Swedish family policies and the integration of immigrant families

Project title

Swedish family policies and the integration of immigrant families

Project summary

In this project, we study how the design of and generosity in different types of family benefits affect the integration process among immigrants in terms of labour market attachment, earnings, and children’s school performance. By combining register data from different sources, and exploring changed rules within the relevant benefit schemes, we study casual effects of different types of compensation benefits, and their design, for a number of different parental and child outcomes, but also for family stability (separation or not) and family size. The project has three different parts, and we ask the following questions:

1. Does the length of paid parental leave affect newly arrived families’ integration process? To answer this question, we explore the combination of two rule changes (in 2014 and 2017) within the Swedish parental insurance.
2. Does access to care allowance affect newly arrived families’ integration process? To answer this question, we explore variation across Swedish municipalities in the provision of child-care allowance.
3. Does it matter whether the child allowance is paid to both the mother and the father (which is the default in Sweden since a reform in 2014), or just the mother (which was the default before, and which is the norm in many other countries)? To answer this question, we compare parents who have a child born just before the change in the default of the receiver with parents who have a child born just after.

Project duration

2019-2022

Main applicant

Erica Lindahl

Co-applicant

Caroline Hall, Olof Rosenqvist and Håkan Selin

Funder

FORTE

Amount received

SEK 4,000,000