IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmpps/v34y2013i2p126-141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social assistance among immigrants and natives in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Björn Anders Gustafsson

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the issue of social assistance receipt among immigrants to Sweden and compare to receipt by natives. Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes the institutional background, reports statistical information and surveys the literature on the immigrant‐native disparity in social assistance receipt. Findings - Most out‐payment for social assistance in Sweden refers to foreign‐born persons, a category comprising 14 percent of the population. Immigrants tend to assimilate out of social assistance receipt. However, receipt continues to be higher many years after immigration among immigrants from non‐rich countries than for natives with several identical characteristics. The elevated probabilities of social assistance receipt among immigrants from non‐rich countries are interpreted to be mainly due to failed integration into the labor market at the destination. Practical implications - Policies for integrating immigrants into the labor market are also policies for reducing social assistance receipt among immigrants and reducing immigrant‐native social assistance disparity. However, other factors such as the structure of Swedish welfare policy play a role as well. Originality/value - This is the first survey of the literature on disparities in social assistance receipt between immigrants and natives in Sweden.

Suggested Citation

  • Björn Anders Gustafsson, 2013. "Social assistance among immigrants and natives in Sweden," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 34(2), pages 126-141, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:34:y:2013:i:2:p:126-141
    DOI: 10.1108/01437721311320654
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437721311320654/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437721311320654/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/01437721311320654?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gustafsson, Björn Anders & Katz, Katarina & Österberg, Torun, 2020. "Social Assistance Receipt among Young Adults Grown up in Different Neighbourhoods of Metropolitan Sweden," IZA Discussion Papers 12880, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Jan O. Jonsson & Carina Mood & Erik Bihagen, 2016. "Poverty trends during two recessions and two recoveries: lessons from Sweden 1991–2013," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-20, December.
    3. Gustafsson, Björn Anders & Mac Innes, Hanna & Österberg, Torun, 2016. "Age at Immigration Matters for Labor Market Integration: The Swedish Example," IZA Discussion Papers 10423, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Björn Gustafsson & Katarina Katz & Torun Osterberg, 2019. "Social Assistance Receipt Among Young Adults Who Grow Up in Different Neighborhoods of Metropolitan Sweden," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(4), pages 302-324, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:34:y:2013:i:2:p:126-141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.