The gender gap in workplace authority in Sweden 1968-2000 – a family affair?

We assess whether the gender gap in authority in Sweden has changed during the period 1968–2000, and investigate to what extent family factors are responsible for this gap. We find that the gap has narrowed modestly during this period, and identify the life-event of parenthood as a major cause of the gap. When men become fathers, they gain authority; when women become mothers, they do not. Our fixed effects panel estimates of the effects of family factors deviate from the cross-sectional estimates, suggesting that unobserved individual heterogeneity – routinely neglected in this line of research – matters.Workplace authority; gender gap; work-family balance; Sweden

Ability Groupings Effects on Grades and the Attainment of Higher Education: A Natural Experiment

To test the effect of ability grouping on grades and the attainment of higher education, this study examines a naturally occurring experimentan admission reform that dramatically increased ability sorting between schools in the municipality of Stockholm. Following six cohorts of students (N= 79,020) from the age of 16 to 26, I find a mean effect close to zero and small positive and negative differentiating effects on grades. With regard to the attainment of higher education, I find a mean effect close to zero, the achievement group gap was unaffected, the immigrant-native gap increased, and the class background gap decreased. These results are consistent with much previous research that has found small mean effects of ability grouping. They are inconsistent with previous research, however, in that I find ability groupings effects on gaps are rather small and point in different directions.Funding Agencies|European Research Council under the European Union [324233]; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [M12-0301:1]; Swedish Research Council [445-2013-7681, 340-2013 5460]; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare [2011-0968]</p

Unpacking the Causes of Ethnic Segregation across Workplaces

Using a large sample of employees-within-workplaces, the author investigates the relative role of random and systematic sorting for ethnic segregation across workplaces. If employees, in a counterfactual world, were randomly allocated to workplaces, the level of ethnic segregation across workplaces would just be halved. The remainder of segregation - systematic segregation - is upheld because employees that are recruited to workplaces tend to be similar to those already employed there, not because underrepresented groups within workplaces are systematically screened out of them. This homosocial inflow of employees appears largely to be sustained by employers’ tendency to select new employees from a pool of workplaces where its employees have been employed previously

Unpacking the Causes of Ethnic Segregation across Workplaces

Using a large sample of employees-within-workplaces, the author investigates the relative role of random and systematic sorting for ethnic segregation across workplaces. If employees, in a counterfactual world, were randomly allocated to workplaces, the level of ethnic segregation across workplaces would just be halved. The remainder of segregation - systematic segregation - is upheld because employees that are recruited to workplaces tend to be similar to those already employed there, not because underrepresented groups within workplaces are systematically screened out of them. This homosocial inflow of employees appears largely to be sustained by employers’ tendency to select new employees from a pool of workplaces where its employees have been employed previously.workplaces; segregation; ethnicity; simulation

The opportunity structure of segregation : School choice and school segregation in Sweden

It is a matter of debate whether free school choice should lead to higher or lower levels of school segregation. We investigate how school choice opportunities affect school segregation utilizing geocoded Swedish population register data with information on 13 cohorts of ninth graders. We find that local school choice opportunities strongly affect the sorting of students across schools based on the parents country of birth and level of education. An increase in the number of local schools leads to higher levels of local segregation net of stable area characteristics, and time-varying controls for population structure and local residential segregation. In particular, the local presence of private voucher schools pushes school segregation upwards. The segregating impact of school choice opportunities is notably stronger in native areas with high portions of highly educated parents, and in areas with low residential segregation. Our results point to the importance of embedding individual actors in relevant opportunity structures for understanding segregation processes.Funding Agencies|VetenskapsradetSwedish Research Council [2013-5460, 2020-02488]; Riksbankens jubileumsfond [M12-0301:1]</p

Ethnic Environment during Childhood and the Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children in Sweden

We ask whether growing up with persons of the same national background (which we refer to as coethnics), in the immediate neighbourhood, influences future educational careers of children of immigrants. We use administrative data to follow an entire cohort of immigrant children who graduated from Swedish compulsory schools in 1995. We have information on their parents and on their ethnic environment during the period they were 10 – 15 years old. The dependent variable studied is the highest completed education in years at age 24. We are able to account for unobserved heterogeneity with neighbourhood fixed effects and ethnic group fixed effects. We find that the effect of the quantitative side of the ethnic environment (the number of coethnics) on educational attainment is strongly conditioned by the qualitative side of this environment (the educational success of coethnics). The individual’s educational career is positively related to the number of young coethnics in the neighbourhood, but only if they can be characterized as being educationally successful. Growing up in a large ethnic community with average or poor educational success is harmful for the future educational success. The effect of the ethnic surrounding on the highest completed education is fully mediated by success in compulsory school

Elite Schools, Elite Ambitions? The Consequences of Secondary-Level School Choice Sorting for Tertiary-Level Educational Choices

We ask if school choice, through its effect on sorting across schools, affects high school graduates’ application decisions to higher education. We exploit a school choice reform that dramatically increased achievement sorting across secondary schools in the municipality of Stockholm, employing a before–after design with a control group of students in similar schools located outside this municipality. The reform had a close to zero mean effect on the propensity to apply for tertiary educational programs, but strongly affected the self-selection by achievement into the kinds of higher educational programs applied for. Low achievers increased their propensity to apply for the ‘low-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to less prestigious, less well-paid occupations, and high achievers increased their propensity to apply for ‘high-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to more prestigious, well-paid occupations. The results suggest that increased sorting across schools reinforces differences across schools and groups in ‘cultures of ambition’. Although these effects translate into relatively small increases in the gender gap, the immigration gap, and the parental education gap in educational choice, our results indicate that school choice, and the increased sorting it leads to, through conformity mechanisms in schools polarizes educational choices of students across achievement groups.Funding agenceis:Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and WelfareSwedish Research CouncilSwedish Research Council for Health Working Life &amp; Welfare (Forte) [2011-0968]</p

Using register data to estimate causal effects of interventions: An ex post synthetic control-group approach

Aims: It is common in the context of evaluations that participants have not been selected on the basis of transparent participation criteria, and researchers and evaluators many times have to make do with observational data to estimate effects of job training programs and similar interventions. The techniques developed by researchers in such endeavours are useful not only to researchers narrowly focused on evaluations, but also to social and population science more generally, as observational data overwhelmingly are the norm, and the endogeneity challenges encountered in the estimation of causal effects with such data are not trivial. The aim of this article is to illustrate how register data can be used strategically to evaluate programs and interventions and to estimate causal effects of participation in these. Methods: We use propensity score matching on pretreatment-period variables to derive a synthetic control group, and we use this group as a comparison to estimate the employment-treatment effect of participation in a large job-training program. Results: We find the effect of treatment to be small and positive but transient. Conclusions: Our method reveals a strong regression to the mean effect, extremely easy to interpret as a treatment effect had a less advanced design been used (e.g. a within-subjects panel data analysis), and illustrates one of the unique advantages of using population register data for research purposes.Funding Agencies|European Social Fund in Sweden; European Research Council under European Union [324233]; Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [M12-0301:1]; Swedish Research Council [445-2013-7681, 340-2013-5460]</p

Ethnic Environment during Childhood and the Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children in Sweden

We ask whether growing up with persons of the same national background (which we refer to as coethnics), in the immediate neighbourhood, influences future educational careers of children of immigrants. We use administrative data to follow an entire cohort of immigrant children who graduated from Swedish compulsory schools in 1995. We have information on their parents and on their ethnic environment during the period they were 10 – 15 years old. The dependent variable studied is the highest completed education in years at age 24. We are able to account for unobserved heterogeneity with neighbourhood fixed effects and ethnic group fixed effects. We find that the effect of the quantitative side of the ethnic environment (the number of coethnics) on educational attainment is strongly conditioned by the qualitative side of this environment (the educational success of coethnics). The individual’s educational career is positively related to the number of young coethnics in the neighbourhood, but only if they can be characterized as being educationally successful. Growing up in a large ethnic community with average or poor educational success is harmful for the future educational success. The effect of the ethnic surrounding in the highest completed education is fully mediated by success in compulsory school