A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Parental leave use among newly arrived immigrant mothers in Sweden: Causes and consequences

  2024. Eleonora Mussino, Ann-Zofie Duvander. Journal of European Social Policy 34 (1), 85-100

  Article

  Immigration to Sweden is dominated by women and men of childbearing age, and many arrive with children. The labour-market integration of newly arrived mothers is of concern, and well directed social policy is crucial. Parental leave is based on residence, and until recently it was granted to all parents of foreign-born children of preschool age. This study uses population and social insurance registers to investigate whether newly arrived immigrant mothers use parental leave upon arrival, and whether use is an obstacle to future labour-market activity. Our results indicate that the majority of the newly arrived mothers do not take any parental leave, but also that there are great differences in uptake in relation to country of birth and reason for residence permit. However, there seem to be only marginal associations between parental leave use and subsequent labour-market attachment. Nevertheless, moderate use is associated with labour-market activity rather than being an obstacle to it. Our results contribute to the debate on the unintended effects of social policy on the integration of immigrants.

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• Multiple Origins and Multiple Destinations: The Fertility of Immigrant Women in Europe

  2024. Eleonora Mussino, Stefano Cantalini. Journal of International Migration and Integration

  Article

  Studies on immigrant fertility typically compare immigrants and natives or different migrant groups at the same destination but rarely immigrants of the same origins in different destination countries. In this paper, we look at immigrants from multiple origins in multiple destination countries simultaneously, using the European Union Labour Force Survey to compare female immigrants from ten areas of origin in eight destination countries in Europe. Our results indicate a strong origin effect. However, they also suggest that when women migrate to a context where the fertility norm is different from that in their origin, they adjust their behaviors accordingly, which indicates that policy and normative context play an important role in shaping migrants’ fertility. From a policy perspective, this is important because it suggests that the fertility of immigrant women, who are exposed to different norms and normative contexts, can resemble that of native women at the destination. Our findings contribute to strengthening the role of destination in shaping fertility behavior and highlighting the importance of looking at all the possible combinations of immigrants coming from and going to different fertility regimes. 

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• Introduction to the Thematic Series: Use and consequences of family policies among migrants and their descendants in Europe

  2023. Eleonora Mussino, Elisabeth Kraus, Nadja Milewski. Genus 79 (1)

  Article

  This article is the introduction to the Thematic Series Use and consequences of family policies among migrants and their descendants in Europe. The study contexts are countries in different Western European regions: Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy. Despite their differences with respect to welfare-state types in general and family policies in particular, these countries also vary when it comes to their immigration histories and current migrant populations. Yet, the fast-growing field of research on the effects of family polices on family and fertility behavior as well as work-family reconciliation has virtually overlooked migrants. To address this void in the existing literature, this Thematic Series raises two research questions: To what degree do family policies include, and are used by, migrants and their descendants? And, to what extent do such polices promote migrants’ integration into European societies? The collection contains six empirical articles investigating either eligibility or use and consequences of two specific family policy measures: parental leave and external childcare. Collectively, the studies show significant disadvantages among migrant groups in eligibility for family policy measures, and consequently in their use and impacts on further life-course patterns, compared to majority populations. They also demonstrate diverging patterns within migrant populations.

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• Lives saved, lives lost, and under-reported COVID-19 deaths: Excess and non-excess mortality in relation to cause-specific mortality during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden

  2024. Eleonora Mussino (et al.). Demographic Research 50

  Article

  Background: The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths differed across countries and across waves of the pandemic. Patterns also differed between groups within a country.

  Objective: We combine data on excess mortality with data on cause-of-death-specific mortality in the case of Sweden to identify which groups had excess mortality beyond what can be captured by analyses of COVID-19-specific deaths. We also explore the possibility that some groups may have benefited in terms of reduced all-cause mortality, potentially due to home-centered living conditions during the pandemic.

  Methods: We produced and compared three sets of group-specific incidence rates: deaths from (1) any cause in 2020, (2) any cause in 2019, (3) any cause excluding COVID-19 in 2020. We compared rates across different socioeconomic profiles based on combinations of sex, age, marital status, education, and country of birth.

  Contribution: We show that many of those who died during 2020 would not have done so in the absence of the pandemic. We find some evidence of COVID-19 mortality underestimation, mainly among individuals with a migration background. We also found groups for which mortality decreased during the pandemic, even when including COVID-19 mortality. Progression across the first and second waves of the pandemic shows that more groups appeared to become protected over time and that there was less underestimation of COVID-19 mortality in the second part of 2020.

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• Natives' and migrants' employment uncertainty and childbearing during the great recession: a comparison between Italy and Sweden

  2023. Giammarco Alderotti, Eleonora Mussino, Chiara Ludovica Comolli. European Societies 25 (4), 539-573

  Article

  This study contributes to the empirical research on the fertility decline registered in Europe in the aftermath of the Great Recession adopting a comparative perspective. We explore childbearing behavior during the crisis across three dimensions of vulnerability: migration background (measured as: country of origin and length of stay in the destination country), labor market uncertainty, and country of residence. We compare childbearing behavior by parity among native and migrant women with different employment statuses in Sweden and Italy. Using the Swedish population registers and the Italian Labor Force Survey, we investigate the change in childbearing probabilities between the pre-crisis (2006–2009) and the years following the onset of the crisis (2010–2015). We find that the chances of motherhood in the aftermath of the Great Recession decreased substantially among recently arrived migrant women, but also among unemployed natives and women with unstable careers. The migration and labor market vulnerabilities, however, do not accumulate: unemployment and career instability negatively affect only native women’s probability of motherhood. Finally, the country comparison demonstrates that while the duration of stay and the weaker labor market attachment reduces the chances of motherhood in both contexts, the negative effect of unemployment is particularly strong in Italy.

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• How does the age of the youngest child affect parental survival?

  2023. Sven Drefahl, Eleonora Mussino. Genus 79

  Article

  Previous research has investigated several different aspects of the relationship between having a child and parental mortality. One aspect of research that has been neglected until now is the age of the child. If children have an effect on parental mortality, this is likely to change as they grow up. We apply hazard regression models to longitudinal Swedish register data of the total population for men and women separately. Adjusting for a variety of control variables, we find that parents with younger children experience a substantive mortality advantage compared to parents—of the same age—who have older children. The mortality advantage decreases gradually as the age of the youngest child increases. Robustness checks confirm that this result cannot be explained by differences in the parent’s age and parental age at first birth. Childless women and men of the same age experience the highest mortality. Additional models for different causes of death suggest that selection, behavioral changes, and unobserved protective effects contribute to this pattern.

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• COVID-19 mortality across occupations and secondary risks for elderly individuals in the household: A population register-based study

  2022. Sunnee Billingsley (et al.). Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health 48 (1), 52-60

  Article

  Objectives This is the first population-level study to examine inequalities in COVID-19 mortality according to working-age individuals' occupations and the indirect occupational effects on COVID-19 mortality of older individuals who live with them.

  Methods We used early-release data for the entire population of Sweden of all recorded COVID-19 deaths from 12 March 2020 to 23 February 2021, which we linked to administrative registers and occupational measures. Cox proportional hazard models assessed relative risks of COVID-19 mortality for the working-aged population registered in an occupation in December 2018 and the older population who lived with them.

  Results Among working aged-adults, taxi/bus drivers had the highest relative risk of COVID-19 mortality: over four times that of skilled workers in IT, economics, or administration when adjusted only for basic demographic characteristics. After adjusting for socioeconomic factors (education, income and country of birth), there are no occupational groups with clearly elevated (statistically significant) COVID-19 mortality. Neither a measure of exposure within occupations nor the share that generally can work from home were related to working-aged adults' risk of COVID-19 mortality. Instead of occupational factors, traditional socioeconomic risk factors best explained variation in COVID-19 mortality. Elderly individuals, however, faced higher COVID-19 mortality risk both when living with a delivery or postal worker or worker(s) in occupations that generally work from home less, even when their socioeconomic factors are taken into account.

  Conclusions Inequalities in COVID-19 mortality of working-aged adults were mostly based on traditional risk factors and not on occupational divisions or characteristics in Sweden. However, older individuals living with those who likely cannot work from home or work in delivery or postal services were a vulnerable group.

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• Influences of origin and destination on migrant fertility in Europe

  2022. Eleonora Mussino, Stefano Cantalini. Population, Space and Place 28 (7)

  Article

  The current study examines the quantum of childbearing of migrants from low-fertility contexts (Poland and Romania) at multiple destinations (Italy and the United Kingdom), and compares them to stayers at origin and to nonmigrants at destination, combining the multiorigin/multidestination approach with the 'context-of-origin' perspective. Using data from the Labour Force Surveys (2009-2015) and adopting a gender and a couple perspective, we show that Polish and Romanian women have fewer children than nonmigrants at destinations. Romanian migrant women and men have a fertility similar to that of stayers at the origin, especially in United Kingdom, suggesting a socialization pattern for this group. Our findings also suggest the presence of the disruption mechanism for migrants, mainly in the short term, combined with a 'catch-up' in the long run explained by family reunification, primarily in Italy. However, the 'catch-up' over time of residence is found to be slower compared to previous studies. Finally, we find selection into migration and into different destination play an important role.

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• How Assad changed population growth in Sweden and Norway

  2021. Marianne Tønnessen, Siddartha Aradhya, Eleonora Mussino. PLOS ONE 16 (1)

  Article

  In an increasingly interconnected world, the demographic effects of wars are not confined only to war zones and neighbouring areas; wars and conflicts may also change populations far away. Without the war in Syria under President Assad and the associated mass exodus of Syrian refugees, the population trends in distant countries like Sweden and Norway over the last few years would have been different. We create hypothetical scenarios of the population developments in Sweden and Norway without a war in Syria from 2011 onwards, where excess immigration due to the war and associated excess births are removed. The results indicate that population growth in 2016 would have been roughly 36% lower in Sweden and 26% lower in Norway without the Syrian war. The number of births in 2017 would have been about 3% lower in Sweden and 1% lower in Norway. One in ten municipalities would have had a population decline in 2016 instead of a population increase, and the largest immigrant group in Sweden by January 2019 would still be of Finnish origin.

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• The Fertility of Immigrants From Low-Fertility Settings: Adaptation in the Quantum and Tempo of Childbearing?

  2021. Eleonora Mussino, Ben Wilson, Gunnar Andersson. Demography 58 (6), 2169-2191

  Article

  Immigrant women who have lived longer in a destination often have relatively low levels of fertility, which is sometimes taken as evidence of the adaptation of behavior. This evidence is almost exclusively based on studies of immigrants from high-fertility settings, while the fertility of immigrants from low-fertility settings has been largely overlooked. Research has also rarely studied the fertility of immigrants who migrated as children, despite the methodological advantages of applying such an approach. This study focuses on women who grew up in Sweden with a migration background from low-fertility origins. We expect that Sweden's welfare regime makes it easier for women to combine childbearing and working life, regardless of migration background, thereby facilitating an adaptation of fertility behavior toward that prevailing in Sweden. We find evidence of adaptation in terms of birth timing for at least half of the country-origin groups that we study, but very little evidence of adaptation in terms of completed fertility. Further, we find that, in comparison with ancestral Swedes, completed fertility differentials are larger for second-generation individuals than for immigrants who arrived during childhood. This is evidence against the notion of “straight-line” adaptation for immigrants and the children of immigrants who are born in Sweden.

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• Similar Negotiations over Childcare? A Comparative Study of Fathers' Parental Leave Use in Finland and Sweden

  2021. Ann-Zofie Duvander, Eleonora Mussino, Jussi Tervola. Societies 11 (3)

  Article

  Fathers' leave use is promoted in many countries, but so far with different success. Major explanations of different usage revolve around economic bargaining between parents and economic constraints in the household. By using extensive register data from 1999-2009 in Finland and Sweden, this study asks whether fathers' use of parental leave in the two countries is determined by the same socioeconomic characteristics on the individual and the household level once we control for sociodemographic factors. Striking similarities in what influences fathers' use of leave in the two contexts are found, even though leave is used at very different levels and the policy design differs remarkably. Generally, fathers with a similar income level to the mother use leave the most, but in high-income households the mother's higher income leads to the highest propensity of fathers' leave take-up. The results indicate that equal bargaining positions are associated with fathers' leave use but also that mothers' stronger position often facilitates fathers' leave. We conclude that the role of gendered bargaining positions should be studied in interaction with the level of resources in the household.

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• A population-based cohort study of socio-demographic risk factors for COVID-19 deaths in Sweden

  2020. Sven Drefahl (et al.). Nature Communications 11 (1)

  Article

  As global deaths from COVID-19 continue to rise, the world's governments, institutions, and agencies are still working toward an understanding of who is most at risk of death. In this study, data on all recorded COVID-19 deaths in Sweden up to May 7, 2020 are linked to high-quality and accurate individual-level background data from administrative registers of the total population. By means of individual-level survival analysis we demonstrate that being male, having less individual income, lower education, not being married all independently predict a higher risk of death from COVID-19 and from all other causes of death. Being an immigrant from a low- or middle-income country predicts higher risk of death from COVID-19 but not for all other causes of death. The main message of this work is that the interaction of the virus causing COVID-19 and its social environment exerts an unequal burden on the most disadvantaged members of society. Better understanding of who is at highest risk of death from COVID-19 is important for public health planning. Here, the authors demonstrate an unequal mortality burden associated with socially disadvantaged groups in Sweden.

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• Residential context and COVID-19 mortality among adults aged 70 years and older in Stockholm

  2020. Maria Brandén (et al.). The Lancet. Healthy Longevity 1 (2), e80-e88

  Article

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• Fertility patterns of migrants from low-fertility countries in Norway

  2020. Marianne Tønnessen, Eleonora Mussino. Demographic Research 42, 859-873

  Article

  BACKGROUND Most research on migrant fertility focuses on immigrants from high-fertility countries who have moved to countries with lower fertility. Little is known about the fertility of immigrant women from countries where fertility is lower than in the destination country. OBJECTIVE This study investigates fertility rates among women from low-fertility countries who have moved to a country where fertility is comparatively higher (Norway). METHODS Register data on immigrant women from Poland, Lithuania, and Germany are used to calculate total fertility rates by duration of stay and to explore differences between family migrants and women who migrate for other reasons, between women of different ages at arrival, and between those who emigrated again and those who remained in Norway. RESULTS Among immigrants from low-fertility countries, total fertility rates are elevated in the first years after migration. This is particularly true for women from Poland and Lithuania, who often arrive as family migrants and at peak fertility age (25 to 34 years). CONTRIBUTION The fertility among migrants from low-fertility settings is often highest right after migration, particularly if they arrive as family migrants. Women with nonfamily reasons for migration have a time lag between immigration and peak fertility. The results underscore the usefulness of taking reason for and age at migration into account when studying immigrant fertility.

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• Over-coverage in population registers leads to bias in demographic estimates

  2019. Andrea Monti (et al.). Population Studies

  Article

  Estimating the number of individuals living in a country is an essential task for demographers. This study assesses the potential bias in estimating the size of different migrant populations due to over-coverage in population registers. Over-coverage-individuals registered but not living in a country-is an increasingly pressing phenomenon; however, there is no common understanding of how to deal with over-coverage in demographic research. This study examines different approaches to and improvements in over-coverage estimation using Swedish total population register data. We assess over-coverage levels across migrant groups, test how estimates of age-specific death and fertility rates are affected when adjusting for over-coverage, and examine whether over-coverage can explain part of the healthy migrant paradox. Our results confirm the existence of over-coverage and we find substantial changes in mortality and fertility rates, when adjusted, for people of migrating age. Accounting for over-coverage is particularly important for correctly estimating migrant fertility.

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• Use It or Save It? Migration Background and Parental Leave Uptake in Sweden

  2016. Eleonora Mussino, Ann-Zofie Duvander. European Journal of Population 32 (2), 189-210

  Article

  Sweden is a welfare state with a family policy that strongly emphasizes equality without distinction by place of birth or gender. In this study, we investigate the differences in uptake of parental leave between native and immigrant mothers, and the connection to labour-market attachment. Sweden represents a unique case study, not only because of the strong effort to combine work and family for all women and men, the high level of fertility and the large presence of immigrants in the country; it also enables a detailed and sophisticated analysis based on the high-quality data derived from its population registers. We find that immigrant mothers use more parental leave benefit the first year after their child's birth, but then fewer in the second year compared with native mothers. The differences diminish when labour-market activity is controlled for. Additionally, after a time in Sweden, immigrant mothers use leave more similarly to how native mothers do.

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