Immigrants' return to schooling in Sweden

The aim of this paper is to examine if the returns to immigrants’ schooling are lower than the returns to natives’ schooling. In addition the paper tries to establish whether immigrants who invest in different amounts of Swedish education also differ in their returns to schooling. The results show that the difference in returns to schooling between immigrants and natives is generally quite small. Moreover, the returns to schooling are considerably higher for immigrants who arrived in Sweden during compulsory school age than for immigrants who arrived in Sweden after compulsory school age. Moreover, immigrants who complete their schooling in Sweden have, in general, much higher returns than immigrants with only foreign schooling.Immigrants; return to schooling; incomes

The Income Gap Between Natives and Second Generation Immigrants in Sweden: Is Skill the Explanation?

This is the first study to use an achievement test score to analyze whether the income gap between second-generation immigrants and natives is caused by a skill gap rather than ethnic discrimination. Since, in principle, every male Swedish citizen takes the test when turning 18, we are able to bring more evidence to bear on the matter by estimating the income gap for a very large sample of individuals who are of the same age and have the same years of schooling at the test date. Once the result of the Swedish Military Enlistment Test is controlled for, the income gap almost disappears for second generation immigrants with both parents born in Southern Europe or outside Europe. However, when using a regular set of control variables the income gap becomes overestimated. This difference in results is most likely explained by the fact that schooling is a bad measure of productive skills for these groups of second-generation immigrants. It indicates that they compensate for their lower probability of being employed by investing in (in relation to their skill level) more schooling than otherwise similar natives.Productive skills, discrimination, incomes, wages

Studies in Educational Attainment and Returns to Education

This licentiate thesis consists of two separate studies on educational attainment and returns to education. The first paper, “Ethnic Segregation and Educational Attainment in Sweden”, studies whether youths brought up in ethnically segregated neighbourhoods differ in educational attainment from youths brought up in more affluent neighbourhoods, after controlling for family characteristics. The ethnically segregated neighbourhoods are to a large extent the areas which the Commission on Metropolitan Areas in Sweden has identified as the most socially disadvantaged areas in Sweden. Our assumption is that the ethnic segregation rate in a neighbourhood is an indicator of the social status of the neighbourhood. Besides an ordered probit model the paper also uses propensity score matching as an alternative method to analyze the issues raised in the paper. Our results indicate that there is an association between educational attainment and growing up in an ethnically segregated neighbourhood. The main objective of the second paper, “Ability and Rates of Return to Schooling - making use of the Swedish Enlistment Battery Test”, is to estimate and compare the return to investments in education for men belonging to different parts of the ability distribution. Our ability measure is the achievement test score from the Swedish Military Enlistment Battery. We find that a higher score on the Swedish Enlistment test is associated with a higher return to schooling. The relationship between the return to schooling and the test score does however seem to be decreasing in the test score. Thus, it is primarily the ability specific return to schooling for the lower test groups that diverts from the average return to schooling

The Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Exploring the Role of Skills and Health Using Data on Adoptees and Twins

In this paper, we focus on possible causal mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission of human capital. For this purpose, we use both an adoption and a twin design and study the effect of parents' education on their children's cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and health. Our results show that greater parental education increases children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as well as their health. These results suggest that the effect of parents' education on children's education may work partly through the positive effect that parental education has on children's skills and health.intergenerational transmission, human capital, education, health, cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, adoptees, twins

Education-Occupation Mismatch: Is There an Income Penalty?

This paper adds to the small literature on the consequences of education-occupation mismatches. It examines the income penalty for field of education-occupation mismatches for men and women with higher education in Sweden and reveals that the penalty for such mismatches is large for both men and women. In fact, it is substantially larger than has been found for the US. Controlling for cognitive ability further establishes that the income penalty is not caused by a sorting by ability, at least for Swedish men. The income penalty for men decreases with work experience which is an indication that education-specific skills and work experience are substitutes to some extent. There is no evidence, though, that the mismatched individuals move to a matching occupation over time. Thus, for some, the income penalty seems to be permanent.salary wage differentials, rate of return, human capital, educational economics

Is the setting up aid mitigating the generational renewal problem in farming?

This study is the first to evaluate the setting up aid (SUA), in the Rural Development Programme. For Sweden, we investigate if the aid, firstly, speeds up the transition process to become manager of a farm and, secondly, affects income from farming and survival of the farm. The approach builds on a regression discontinuity design and explores an age 40-the eligibility requirement in the SUA. We find that the SUA has an impact on the transition to farm management, as well as it increases income from farming and farm survival. Consequently, the aid is likely to fulfil its aim of attracting young people into farming

The mediating role of perceived stress between smartphone dependency and psychological well-being among college students

Psychological well-being is one of the main elements in students’ life, especially for successful adaptation to the college environment. Determining what factors influence students’ psychological-well may provide valuable insights and ideas for the development of intervention programs. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the association between life events, smartphone dependency, perceived stress, and psychological well-being and whether perceived stress mediates the association between smartphone dependency and psychological well-being. Pearson correlations and multiple regression analyses with bootstrapped mediation were used to analyze the data in this study. The results show that life events were positively associated with perceived stress and that smartphone dependency was associated with higher perceived stress levels. Then, perceived stress was found negatively correlated with psychological well-being. However, smartphone dependency was not associated with psychological well-being. The bootstrapped analysis indicated that perceived stress fully mediated the association between smartphone dependency and psychological well-being. In summary, this study is significant for practitioners in well-being fields, such as counselors and educators, to promote students’ well-being in higher education

The mediating role of perceived stress between smartphone dependency and psychological well-being among college students

Psychological well-being is one of the main elements in students’ life, especially for successful adaptation to the college environment. Determining what factors influence students’ psychological-well may provide valuable insights and ideas for the development of intervention programs. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the association between life events, smartphone dependency, perceived stress, and psychological well-being and whether perceived stress mediates the association between smartphone dependency and psychological well-being. Pearson correlations and multiple regression analyses with bootstrapped mediation were used to analyze the data in this study. The results show that life events were positively associated with perceived stress and that smartphone dependency was associated with higher perceived stress levels. Then, perceived stress was found negatively correlated with psychological well-being. However, smartphone dependency was not associated with psychological well-being. The bootstrapped analysis indicated that perceived stress fully mediated the association between smartphone dependency and psychological well-being. In summary, this study is significant for practitioners in well-being fields, such as counselors and educators, to promote students’ well-being in higher education