The research study investigates how and why school choice programmes are designed differently across European cities and what consequences this has for parental freedom to choose and educational equality. This will be investigated in three, inter-connected projects.

The notion that our societies are progressing towards a brighter future has long been taken for granted. However, recent studies suggest that people in many rich countries – including Sweden– are rather pessimistic about the future of their countries. This project aims to examine both the causes and consequences of lacking social optimism.

This research program examines cohesion and exclusion in working life in the wake of long-term structural change. As labor markets are transformed by rising skill requirements and service sector expansion, the conditions and opportunities of both traditionally marginal groups and formerly established worker categories may change considerably.

This project aims to provide the first comprehensive economics evaluation of Higher Vocational Education (Yrkeshögskolan). Four separate studies test if HVE influences participant’s labor earnings, participant’s likelihood of employment, occupational or geographical mobility, and the marginal participant’s labor earnings.

Gender gaps in negotiation behaviour and shying away from exposure to social ranking. This project aims to provide new knowledge on why we see persistent gender gaps despite the convergence by gender in many factors.

The project fills the knowledge gap concerning opportunities and challenges for strengthening social dialogue in the exceptional COVID-19 pandemic governance related to social rights and working conditions of vulnerable groups.

We propose a set of empirical studies that further our understanding of gender differences in labor market outcomes. Drawing on our previous work, we study how economic gender gaps are affected by referral-based hiring, the gender composition of groups, and gender stereotypes.

Different paths to employment: special features of the Finnish social security system and problem areas in international comparison

Estimating the long-term effects of letting schools to set their own time tables.

Education and Employment Careers of Refugee Youth who arrived as Unaccompanied Minors and Separated Children. This project construct a very large and comprehensive panel data set from different sources, making it possible to follow children who have arrived in Sweden between 2003 and 2017.

In this research project, we study how market reforms within the Swedish school system have changed the labour market for preschool staff, by investigating whether exposure to competition from private contractors has affected wages, staff turnover, and sickness absence among preschool staff.

There is a lack of empirical research on the processes behind the fact that females on average do better than males in school, and we still lack knowledge about why there is such a strong horizontal gender segregation in education. This project tests hypotheses on how gender differences in education arise and are maintained.

This research project builds on a new data set on hiring in academia – a sector known for its dearth of women at top positions. The data set is unique in its scope and detail, covering all recruitment and promotion processes at the level of assistant, associate, and full professor at Sweden’s 10 largest universities from 2018 to 2020.

This project will explore new aspects about gender equality in the labor market, with a focus on differences in career achievements between men and women. The objective is to investigate the roots of gender inequality and potential reforms that can help increase equality.

A multi-method approach to the transition to parenthood in different-sex and same-sex couples.

This project examines how the rise of women´s employment and earnings affected trends in economic inequality among all households, across OECD and European countries since the 1980s.

The starting point of this project is that research on intergenerational socioeconomic persistence needs to resolutely shift the perspective away from ‘normative’ careers of ‘typical’ men to the actual Swedish population. We aim to broaden the perspective and redevelop concepts and theories to fit the experience of the entire population.

This program emphasizes the multidimensional character of inequality. We integrate the analysis of several central welfare dimensions and study how they cross-cut each other and co-evolve. Our approach is dynamic, following the development of e.g., economic resources, education, health and well-being across individual lives and generations.

We address three questions: (1) Does the RUT reform contribute to increase employment among immigrants? (2) Does the RUT industry provide a stepping stone into more advanced and better paid jobs or a trap for low skilled in low paid professions? (3) Does RUT stimulate immigrants to start their own firms or attain managerial positions?

A large proportion of immigrants in Sweden face difficulties in getting employed, and the situation is especially problematic for some country of origin groups. Two explanations that have been found to be important by previous research are education and discrimination.

Laborocto is a network collaboration between eight Forte-funded programs on work-life research. The network is aimed at long-run promotion of work-life research. Around 100 researchers at all career stages from more than 10 disciplines take part in the network.

Living conditions from adolescence to old age for people with disabilities: A life-cycle analysis of working life, education, health, and family In this project we study education, health and labor market outcomes for people with physical, mental or intellectual disabilities.

This project aims at evaluating long term causal effects of educational contents on voter turnout and health outcomes, as well as to analyze the determinants of educational choices. Educational contents is an underdeveloped area of research although it is widely assumed to affect a number of outcomes.

This project examines the importance of individual work motivation for the structure of labor market inequality. We examine the importance of learning and effort motivation for three central labor market outcomes: employment, occupational attainment and wages.

The main aim of NORDICORE is to create knowledge that will further advance gender balance and diversity in research and innovation. The research design uses mixed methods and data are acquired from a wide range of sources. Thus, it allows to pinpoint specific mechanisms behind gender inequalities.

Young people in immigrant families have on average markedly higher educational and occupational aspirations than others, something often referred to as ‘immigrant optimism’. In this project, we assess whether higher aspirations are a help or a hindrance for young people with foreign-born parents.

The project offers insights into whether and how increasing income inequality spills over into disparities in future generations' educational outcomes. The evidence provided is instrumental to understanding the long-term challenges for the Swedish welfare state to provide equal opportunities for its citizens.

In this 3-year project, we advance research by focusing heterogeneity in career effects of parenthood, as we believe it can give us valuable clues to unveiling the underlying mechanisms of gender inequality.

PrecaNord breaks new ground by offering a multi-level analysis of the prevalence, trends and institutional contexts of precarious and informal work in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Experimental studies in partnership with firms and organizations. This project applys innovative field experimental methods in partnership with firms and organizations. It will focus on two outcomes: recruitment and promotions.

It is commonly perceived that migrants with higher professional qualifications integrate seamlessly into society. This interdisciplinary project aims to explore, with mixed methods, the knowledge gap on the topic of integration of high-skilled labor migrants.

We study how stereotypes and discrimination create persistent economic inequality at three key stages of individuals’ lives: university admissions, choice of a field of study, and labor market entry.

A comparative perspective on Swedish social policy to develop inclusive programmes for an extended working life

This paper presents an evaluation of the effects of changing access, due to supply variations, to three fields of academic upper secondary education in Sweden: Natural Science/Engineering, Social Science/Humanities, and Business.

There is limited evidence on the net benefits of class size reductions for students, teachers and parents. This project's aim is to understand how class size impacts educational mechanisms, health and teacher hiring, both in the short run and in the long run.

This project will use Swedish high-quality population register data on students who attended grade 9 in 1990-1997 to study the impact of a student’s rank order position in the school on their mental health measured in the late teens and in early adulthood.

The project's primary purpose is to increase the understanding of labor market and educational effects of gender transitioning on Swedish adults and youth whilst considering two theoretically specified contexts giving rise to oppression: one focused on gender and the other on being transgender.

Pathways into and out of leadership positions in a gender and life-course perspective. This project fills some gaps within the research field by studying both those who do and do not become leaders, and movements into and out of management positions.

Many countries have introduced student loans to support higher education participation and funding. However, the proportion of students who use loans seems to vary greatly across higher education systems. In this project, we investigate institutional and individual-level factors that influence student loan uptake.

This project explores precarious work in Sweden from the 1960s to the early 2020s, focusing on atypical contracts, job instability, and unemployment. It examines long-term trends vs. short-term fluctuations, and how they affect income, health, and differ by education, gender, immigrant status, and urbanity.

The development of wages during recent decades has in many countries encompassed increasing educational wage premia, the wage difference between college and non-college educated workers. This project focuses on the role of trade unions, and the wage bargaining system, for the development of the wage premium.

A dataset to study the causal effects of university education, exploiting a statistical technique called regression discontinuity. I study the returns to education (in terms of earnings and wealth), educational spillovers between siblings and across generations, and how university education can influence health and social preferences.

This program analyses individual life courses in Europe and the importance of socioeconomic position and gender for working conditions, exit routes and post-retirement health.

In this project, we investigate how workplace segregation by gender in Sweden has developed during the last twenty years. We also study the interplay between occupational segregation by gender and workplace segregation by gender, and to what extent the workplace segregation by gender accounts for the gender gap in labor incomes.

YOUNGWORK engages a highly qualified team of researchers to study how labour market trajectories unfold during early adulthood, and how labour market outcomes relate to factors on the personal, family, or school level.