The effect of ordinal rank in school on educational achievement and income in Sweden

Abstract The discourse on universal basic income varies widely across countries. In Sweden, public opinion is generally negative even in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is barely discussed on the public policy table. On the other hand, in South Korea, public opinion is not as negative as in Sweden, and basic income is actively raised as policy agenda. Our study based on survey results reaffirmed the contrasting attitudes of the Swedish and Suth Korean people regarding basic income and related tax increase. The basic income could appeal to the people in South Korea. On the contrary, there is little room for the introduction of basic income in Sweden. The analysis also revealed similarities within the difference. Those with high income, political-right orientation, high protection against income loss, and high tax burden would be more unfavourable toward introduction of basic income no matter which country they live in.

Studies of neighbourhood effects typically measure the neighbourhood context at one specific spatial scale. It is increasingly acknowledged, however, that the mechanisms through which the residential context affects individual outcomes may operate at different spatial scales, ranging from the very immediate environment to the metropolitan region. We take a multi-scale approach to investigate the extent to which concentrated poverty in adolescence is related to obtained education level and income later in life, by measuring the residential context as bespoke neighbourhoods at five geographical scales that range from areas encompassing the 200 nearest neighbours to areas that include the 200k+ nearest neighbours. We use individual-level geocoded longitudinal register data from Sweden and the Netherlands to follow 15/16-year-olds until they are 30 years old. The findings show that the contextual effects on education are very similar in both countries. Living in a poor area as a teenager is related to a lower obtained educational level when people are in their late 20s. This relationship, however, is stronger for lower spatial scales. We also find effects of contextual poverty on income in both countries. Overall, this effect is stronger in the Netherlands than in Sweden. Partly, this is related to differences in spatial structure. If only individuals in densely populated areas in Sweden are considered, effects on income are similar across the two countries and income effects are more stable across spatial scales. Overall, we find important evidence that the scalar properties of neighbourhood effects differ across life-course outcomes.

BackgroundWealth inequalities are increasing in many countries, but their relationship to health is little studied. We investigated the association between individual wealth and mortality across the adult life course in Sweden.MethodsWe studied the Swedish adult population using national registers. The amount of wealth tax paid in 1990 was the main exposure of interest and the cohort was followed up for 18 years. Relative indices of inequality (RII) summarize health inequalities across a population and were calculated for all-cause and cause-specific mortality for six different age groups, stratified by sex, using Poisson regression. Mortality inequalities by wealth were contrasted with those assessed by individual and household income. Attenuation by four other measures of socio-economic position and other covariates was investigated.ResultsLarge inequalities in mortality by wealth were observed and their association with mortality remained more stable across the adult life course than inequalities by income-based measures. Men experienced greater inequalities across all ages (e.g. the RII for wealth was 2.58 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.54–2.63) in men aged 55–64 years compared with 2.29 (95% CI 2.24–2.34) for women aged 55–64 years), except among the over 85s. Adjustment for covariates, including four other measures of socio-economic position, led to only modest reductions in the association between wealth and mortality.ConclusionsWealth is strongly associated with mortality throughout the adult life course, including early adulthood. Income redistribution may be insufficient to narrow health inequalities—addressing the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth in high-income countries should be considered.

Abstract This study presents a comprehensive analysis of farmers’ income in Sweden. The results indicate that farm households in Sweden do well from a standard‐of‐living perspective, but that farming is still a low‐paid occupation from a return‐on‐skills perspective. Nevertheless, farm earnings increased faster over the study period than earnings in the general population, owing equally to higher farm earnings for operators and higher off‐farm earnings for their spouse. Since few female spouses make farm earnings, evaluating farm household earnings from mainly a household perspective fails to acknowledge the individual careers of farmer and spouse.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines immigrant poverty at an older age in Sweden with an emphasis on late-in-life immigrants. We analyse tax data for the entire Swedish-born and non-Swedish-born population. The poverty status of a household is assessed using two criteria. First, the disposable income of the household in which the person lived in 2007 must be below 60 per cent of the median equivalent income in Sweden as a whole. Second, to be classified as ‘twice poor’ a household's net assets must be below SEK 10,000. The results indicate that three out of four Swedish-born older persons were not classified as poor by either of the criteria, and only 1 per cent by both criteria. In contrast, among older persons born in low-income countries almost three out of four were classified as poor according to one of the criteria and not fewer than one in three according to both. Results of estimating logistic models indicate that the risk of being considered poor according to both criteria is strongly positively related to one's age at immigration. Our results indicate that it is crucial that migrants, particularly those who arrive after age 40, be better integrated into the Swedish labour market. To alleviate poverty among those migrants who are already of older age, increased transfers are probably the only possible alternative.

This paper considers the role of gender in generating inequality of opportunity. Using data on long-run income for Swedish men and women, we explore to what extent income inequality is due to circumstances beyond individuals’ control, such as gender and parental income, rather than to differences in individuals’ choices. The key idea is that a society has achieved equality of opportunity if there is no income inequality that is due to circumstances. Analyzing men and women separately, we find that circumstances account for up to 31% of income inequality among men and up to 25% among women. We conclude that there is greater equality of opportunity among women than among men. When we analyze men and women together, treating gender as a circumstance, at most 38% of income inequality can be attributed to circumstances. Gender accounts for up to 13% of income inequality, making gender the single most important circumstance in accounting for inequality in long-run income in Sweden.

Abstract In this paper, we investigate to what degree young adults live in neighbourhoods that are similar, in terms of relative average household income, to the neighbourhoods in which they grew up. We use regression analysis on register data for all individuals who were born in 1974 and lived in metropolitan Sweden in both 1990 and 2006. During this period, the distribution of income in Sweden became far more unequal, unemployment rose dramatically, earlier housing policies were dismantled, the share of ‘visible minorities’ increased dramatically, and residential segregation increased very considerably. We find a correlation between average neighbourhood incomes at these two points in the sample's life cycle of 0.44, which is more than three times as high as the household income correlation. We also find that half of the children of ‘visible minorities’ grew up in the poorer quartile of neighbourhoods, and of these, almost two‐thirds remained in the poorest quartile of neighbourhoods as adults. Several measures indicate that intergenerational persistency in context is lower in metropolitan Sweden than was found in a similar study in the US. However, it appears that if visible minority individuals lived in a neighbourhood in the lowest part of the distribution in Sweden as a child, the probability that they will do so also as adults is as high as the corresponding probability for an African‐American person in the US. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper, we investigate to what degree young adults live in neighbourhoods that are similar, in terms of relative average household income, to the neighbourhoods in which they grew up. We use regression analysis on register data for all individuals who were born in 1974 and lived in metropolitan Sweden in both 1990 and 2006. During this period, the distribution of income in Sweden became far more unequal, unemployment rose dramatically, earlier housing policies were dismantled, the share of minorities increased dramatically and residential segregation increased very considerably. We find a correlation between average neighbourhood incomes at these two points in the sample's life cycle of 0.44, which is more than three times as high as the household income correlation. We find that half of the children of minorities grew up in the poorer quartile of neighbourhoods, and of these almost two-thirds remained in the poorest quartile of neighbourhoods as adults. Several measures indicate that intergenerational persistency in context is lower in metropolitan Sweden than was found in a similar study in the United States. However, it appears, that if visible minority individuals lived in a neighbourhood in the lowest part of the distribution in Sweden as a child, the probability that they will do so also as adults is as high as the corresponding probability for a African-American person in the US.

This paper presents annual Swedish time series data on the top marginal tax wedge and marginal tax wedges on labour income for a low-, average- and high-income earner for the period 1862–2010. These data are unique in their consistency, thoroughness and timespan covered. We identify four distinct periods separated by major tax reforms. The tax system can be depicted as proportional, with low tax wedges until the Second World War. Next follows a period featuring increasing tax wedges. During the third period, starting with the 1971 tax reform and continuing throughout the 1980s, the efforts to redistribute income culminated and tax wedges peaked. The high-income earner started to pay the top marginal tax wedge which could be as high as almost 90%. The main explanations for this development are temporary crises leading to permanent tax increases, expansion of the public sector, distributional ambitions, increased local taxes, bracket-creep and the introduction of social security contributions paid by employers. The 1990–1991 tax reform represents the beginning of a new and still continuing period with decreasing marginal tax wedges.

On the variability of income within and across generations

Equality of opportunity is an ethical goal with almost universal appeal. The interpretation taken here is that a society has achieved equality of opportunity if it is the case that what individuals ...

This paper reviews the literature on optimal taxation of labour income and the empirical work on labour supply and the elasticity of taxable income in Sweden. It also presents an overview of Swedish taxation of labour income, offers calculations on the development in effective marginal tax rates and participation tax rates, and estimates, using the difference-in-differences method, the impact of tax incentives on employment rates of elderly workers. After this background, we ponder possibilities for reforming the Swedish tax system to improve its labour market impacts. We suggest better targeting the earned income tax credit at families and low-income workers, lowering the top marginal tax rates, and maintaining the tax incentives for older workers.

Equality of opportunity is an ethical goal with almost universal appeal. The interpretation taken here is that a society has achieved equality of opportunity if it is the case that what individuals accomplish, with respect to some desirable objective, is determined wholly by their choices and personal effort, rather than by circumstances beyond their control. We use data for Swedish men born between 1955 and 1967 for whom we measure the distribution of long-run income, as well as several important background circumstances, such as parental education and income, family structure and own IQ before adulthood. We address the question: in Sweden, given its present constellation of social policies and institutions, to what extent is existing income inequality due to circumstances, as opposed to 'effort'? Our results suggest that several circumstances, importantly both parental income and own IQ, are important for long-run income inequality, but that variations in individual effort account for the most part of that inequality.

Family background and income during the rise of the welfare state: Brother correlations in income for Swedish men born 1932–1968

The goal of this study is to examine trends in the importance of family background in determining adult income in Sweden. We investigate whether the association between family background and income in Sweden has changed for cohorts born 1932-1968. Our main finding is that the share of the variance in long-run income that is attributable to family background, the so-called brother correlation in income, has fallen by some 11 percentage points from 0.34 for the cohorts of brothers born in the early 1930s to below 0.23 for the cohorts born around 1950. From then on, the correlations have been more or less stable and are in line with earlier estimates. When we adjust income for the income return to years of schooling, we find constant brother correlations in income. The main effect is coming from changes in the distribution of schooling across cohorts. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that education policies have been a key factor in equalizing life chances in Sweden.

Health inequalities by wage income in Sweden: The role of work environment

This article aims to throw light on why inequality in the distribution of income in Sweden fell from the mid-i920s to the second half of the 1950s. A new database has been created by coding tax records and other documents for the city of Goteborg. In the analysis the Gini-coefficient and its changes are decomposed by income source. The information shows that in the mid1920S income in urban Sweden was fairly unequally distributed. The compression of the income distribution came about as real income at the lower end increased rapidly, while the real income of the most affluent decile remained more or less constant. Much of the initial decrease in income inequality was due to capital income decreasing in average size and in addition becoming less extremely concentrated at the top of the income distribution. From the mid-i930s onward households paid ever larger shares of their income as income taxes which caused income inequality to decrease.

Progressive taxation with a balanced government budget functions as insurance since individuals with low realized incomes receive a net subsidy from the public sector. We calculate the level of taxes that optimally trades off benefits due to such insurance with costs arising from distorted labor-supply incentives. Given the best available evidence on parameter values, this optimal rate is roughly 15 percentage points less than the aggregate marginal rate on earned income in Sweden as of 1979. We also assess the median-voter hypothesis by calculating the rate preferred by the median voter; this rate turns out to be about 50 percentage points lower than the actual rate. Progressive taxation which redistributes income-that is, a negative income tax-can function as insurance since individuals who are unlucky and have low realized incomes are compensated via a net redistribution from the public sector. Given risk aversion, this social insurance is valuable. At the same time, the provision of insurance generates moral hazard in the form of distorted factor-supply incentives. Thus, an optimal pattern of taxation should balance the insurance effects and distortions caused by greater tax progressivity. This paper is concerned with the magnitudes of tax rates and progressivity implied by this optimal-taxation tradeoff. The topic is of particular interest in view of the high tax rates in a number of northern European countries. One wonders whether these actual rates may be close to or perhaps even beyond the rates that would optimally balance social-insur

Two measures of social class (one using the operational criteria developed by Wright; the other based upon the Swedish social group typology) are used to explore the relationships among class, income, and education in Sweden. While the class measures differ in both explanatory power and interpretation, the data show that social class has a significant effect on income in Sweden, that the impact of education on income is dependent on class position, and that some of the income differences between males and females in Sweden can be attributed to social class position. Several recent reports have demonstrated the utility of Marxist class analysis (as compared to approaches based upon measures of status, occupation, income, etc.) in the empirical investigation of inequality in advanced capitalist societies. Marxist empirical researches have stressed the discontinuous nature of social class divisions, the objective assignment of individuals to class positions and the importance of ownership and control in the labor process. This report examines the utility of two such approaches (one using the operational criteria developed by Wright; the other based upon the Swedish social group typology) in explaining the relationships among social class, income and education in Sweden. We expect to show that social class has a significant effect upon income in Sweden, that the impact of education upon income is dependent upon the social class positions which individuals occupy and that some of the income differences between males and females in Sweden can be attributed to social class position.