Stockholms universitet

Roujman ShahbazianForskare

Om mig

 

Beskrivning:

Roujman Shahbazian är bitr. lektor vid Uppsala Universitet, samt affilierad forskare vid Institutet för social forskning (SOFI), Stockholms universitet, och Munchens Ludwig-Maximilian-universitet (LMU).

 

Forskning:

Hans forskning är fokuserad på social skiktning, ojämlikhet och familjesociologi. Han är för närvarande involverad i två tvärvetenskapliga projekter vid SOFI. Den första om könsskillnader i lön och karriärer, med betoning på köns(a)typiska yrken, som är ett FORTE finansierad projekt, dnr: 2023-00034 (med bl.a. C. MagnussonE. Bihagen och J. Westerman). Den andra om karriärer på den svenska arbetsmarknaden från 1960-talet och framåt, som är ett VR finansierad projekt, dnr: 2020-02538 (med E. Bihagen, K. Halldén och J. Westerman). Han är också inblandad i ett samarbete med M.H. Sepahvand som fokuserar på Burkina Faso och individers attityder till risktagande. 

Shahbazian har också deltagit i ett forskningsprojekt om inkomstskillnader över arbetslivet. Mer specifik, att studera betydelsen av klass, kön och kompetens för livstidsinkomter, som var ett FORTE finansierad projekt, dnr: 2018-00532 (med E. Bihagen, A. Böhlmark och S. Kjellsson).

 

Aktuella publikationer:

Forskningsprojekt

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • Does Your Class Give More than a Hint of Your Lifetime Earnings?: Assessing Indicators for Lifetime Earnings Over the Life Course for Sweden

    2022. Roujman Shahbazian, Erik Bihagen. European Sociological Review 38 (4), 527-542

    Artikel

    From a sociological stratification perspective, we would expect occupationally based measures to be valid proxies for lifetime earnings, but recent research suggests that annual earnings outperform occupational measures. In this article, we examine how class, occupation, education, and annual earnings are associated with lifetime earnings across almost complete working lives, at ages of around 20–65 years for Swedish cohorts born in the 1940s. Our results indicate that while annual earnings are considerably more accurate proxies for the lion’s share of working life, occupational measures are as expected more stable and somewhat better at the start and end of working lives. Our results also support the idea that micro-classes are better proxies of lifetime earnings than big classes. Contrary to some previous research, occupational measures perform better for women than for men in this respect, and occupational measures are better than education. Our main conclusions are that proxies for lifetime earnings have life-cycle biases that should be considered in, for instance, analyses of intergenerational mobility, and that occupationally based measures are more stable than annual earnings but, overall, are not very valid as indicators of lifetime earnings compared to annual earnings.

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  • Under the Influence of Our Older Brother and Sister: The Association between Sibling Gender Configuration and STEM Degrees

    2021. Roujman Shahbazian. Social Science Research 97

    Artikel

    This study examines the association between sibling gender configuration and second-born sib-lings’ choice of so-called STEM educational fields (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in Swedish two-child families. Using population data from administrative registers in Sweden, the findings show that younger siblings, net of parental characteristics, are more likely to choose a STEM field if their older sibling has attended or is already attending a STEM program. Moreover, a gender difference is clear concerning the choice of a STEM field among younger siblings: Girls are more likely to choose a STEM field if they have an older sister who has attended a STEM program, than if they have an older brother in a similar program. However, the corre-sponding results are not found for boys. Given that STEM fields are markedly male-dominated at tertiary level, this indicates an importance of a same-sex role model for young girls contemplating gender-atypical educational choices.

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  • Sibling correlation in risk attitudes: evidence from Burkina Faso

    2021. Mohammad H. Sepahvand, Roujman Shahbazian. Journal of Economic Inequality 19, 45-72

    Artikel

    This study uses sibling correlation to provide novel descriptive evidence of parental and household characteristics on three different risk domains collected in a nationally representative survey from Burkina Faso. The sibling correlations are between 0.51 and 0.83. The correlations are higher in the general risk domain compared to risk taking in financial matters and traffic. Moreover, the sibling correlation is higher for sisters than brothers. We also explore which factors might drive these correlations; parents' risk attitudes appears to play a role in explaining these correlations, whereas socioeconomic outcomes, family structure, parental health and residential zone seems to have only a limited contribution. We also find that gender seems to be important in explaining the variation in sibling correlations. Mother's appear to have a stronger contribution on daughters than their sons correlation, whereas father's help to explain their sons correlation.

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  • Intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes in Burkina Faso

    2021. Mohammad H. Sepahvand, Roujman Shahbazian. Empirical Economics 61, 503-527

    Artikel

    Previous research shows that transmission of attitudes in the family is gendered. However, there are limited findings about intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes and whether it is gendered. This study replicates the findings by Dohmen et al. (Rev Econ Stud 79(2):645-677) for Germany by using quantitative data from Burkina Faso in 2014 to analyze three different self-reported risk questions. Our results show a strong intergenerational transmission of attitudes from parents to children in which positive assortative mating strengthens the parents' transmission of attitudes to her child. Mothers' transmissions are stronger for their daughters than sons. For fathers, the pattern is inverted. Our findings also show the existence of heterogeneity in intergenerational transmission within a male- and female-dominated risk domain. This supports the gender-specific role model hypothesis. Furthermore, we find support for the transmission of attitudes from the local environment to the child, but the strength and significance of this transmission decrease when controlling for parents' attitudes.

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  • Individual's risk attitudes in sub-Saharan Africa: Determinants and reliability of self-reported risk in Burkina Faso

    2021. Mohammad H. Sepahvand, Roujman Shahbazian. African Review of Economics and Finance 13 (1), 166-192

    Artikel

    Understanding individual risk taking is an important topic in Africa, as access to financial institutions and social security is scarce, and where markets and government policies largely fail to understand investment decisions of poor households. Data on risk attitudes in Africa is limited and the available data collected might not be reliable. We investigate the determinants of risk attitudes in different domains and the reliability of survey data in a sub-Saharan African country, Burkina Faso, using a large representative panel survey of 31,677 individuals from 10,800 households. Our results show that determinants such as individual's sex and age are significantly associated with willingness to take risk. Reliability differs across determinants of risk taking and risk domains. Women, older individuals or those with high education have more reliable risk measures compared to men, younger individuals or people with low education. Risk taking in traffic has the highest test-retest reliability followed by willingness to take risk in general and financial matters.

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  • Is there any difference between having a brother or having a sister? The association between sex-composition and socioeconomic outcomes in Swedish two-and three-child families

    2020. Roujman Shahbazian. Journal of Family Studies 26 (3), 362-388

    Artikel

    This study focuses on the association of sibling sex-composition on socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood, where previous studies have found mixed results. Using Swedish administrative registers covering all biological siblings born between years 1960 and 1970 in two- and three-child families, the sex-composition of siblings is disentangled from their birth order and gender. The reported income magnitudes (measured as rank and absolute term) are small. In all, having a same-sex or opposite-sex sibling seems not to be an important family structural component for understanding socioeconomic outcomes such as income differences.

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  • The consequence of birth spacing for first- and second-born siblings’ long-term income rank: A restrictive two-child family approach

    2020. Roujman Shahbazian. Zeitschrift für Familienforschung 32 (1), 72-104

    Artikel

    Birth spacing between siblings may have long-lasting impacts on them. This paper focuses on how different birth-spacing intervals are associated with income rank during the ages 33 to 42 years. In order to disentangle birth spacing from birth order, while holding potential sibsize association constant, an interaction model is used on a restrictive subpopulation of two-child families born between 1960 and 1970. The results show clear differences between first- and second-born siblings. Increased birth spacing, up to 3 years, is positively associated with first-born siblings’ income rank. Birth spacing has a negligible association with second-born siblings, at the common spacing intervals (less than 5 years). Having relatively high spacing intervals (over 5 years) is associated with somewhat lower income-rank than having mid-length intervals for both first- and second-born siblings.

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  • Does revolution change risk attitudes? Evidence from Burkina Faso

    2019. Mohammad H. Sepahvand, Roujman Shahbazian, Ranjula Bali Swain.

    Rapport

    A popular uprising in 2014, led to a revolution overthrowing the sitting president of Burkina Faso. We investigate if individuals’ risk attitudes changed due to this revolution. Specifically, we investigate the impact of the revolution on risk attitudes, by gender, age and level of education. The analysis is based on a unique nationally representative panel Household Budget Survey, which allows us to track the changes in the risk attitudes of the same individuals before, during and after the revolution. Our results suggest that the impact of the revolution is short-term. Individuals become risk averse during the revolution but converge back to the pre-revolution risk attitudes, slightly increasing their risk taking, after the revolution is over. Women are more risk taking than the men after the revolution but are more risk averse during the revolution. In general, older individuals tend to have higher risk aversion than the younger individuals.  During the revolution, however, the individuals with higher level of education are less willing to take risk.

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  • Sibling Configuration and Adulthood Outcomes: The Case of Two-Child Families

    2018. Roujman Shahbazian.

    Avhandling (Dok)

    This thesis includes three empirical studies, analyzing how sibling configuration (i.e. birth order, birth spacing and sex-composition) influences siblings’ long-run income and educational choice. This is done by utilizing the unique linkage opportunities of administrative registers covering the entire population of Sweden.

    Study I: This paper focuses on how different birth spacing intervals are associated with income rank from ages 33 to 42 years, for siblings in two-child families. The results show clear differences between first- and second-born siblings. At the more common spacing intervals (less than 5 years), spacing has a negligible association to second-born children’s long-term income rank. However, first-born children have lower income rank when a younger sibling is born when they are very young. Having relatively high spacing intervals (over 5 years) is associated with somewhat lower long-term income-rank than having mid-length intervals for both first- and second-born siblings.

    Study II: This study focuses on the association between combinations of sibling configuration (i.e. birth order, birth spacing and sex composition) and long-run income rank of siblings. The results show that the significance of different family factors in two-child families vary by sibling sex-composition. The findings suggest that both birth order and birth spacing are important factors for first born boys independent of the younger sibling’s sex. First-born girls, however, only have an advantage if they have a younger sister. More surprisingly is that this advantage does not seem to vary by birth spacing.

    Study III: This study examines how sibling gender configuration in Swedish two-child families influences the choice of so-called STEM educational fields (i.e. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The results show that younger siblings, net of parental characteristics, are more likely to choose a STEM field if their older sibling already has attended a STEM program. The findings indicate that boys’ choice of STEM fields is independent of having an older brother or sister who has attended a STEM program. However, girls seem to be more likely to choose a STEM-field if they have a sister who has attended a STEM program, than if they have a brother with a similar program. Given that STEM-fields are markedly male dominated, this indicate the importance of having a same-sex role model for making gender atypical educational choices.

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  • Work life complexity no longer on the rise: trends among 1930s–1980s birth cohorts in Sweden

    2023. Johan Westerman (et al.). European Societies, 1-33

    Artikel

    There is a conception that contemporary work lives become ever more complex. Pioneering research has indicated that work lives have indeed become more complex, yet at a modestly increasing pace. This paper uses Swedish registry data across an exceptionally long time period, including cohorts born from 1931 to 1983. The following conclusions are drawn using state-of-the-art methods of measuring sequence complexity. For early-careers, an increasing complexity trend is evident between the 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts, yet complexity fluctuates around a stable trend for the 1970s birth cohorts and onward. For mid-careers, which are considerably more stable on average, complexity has decreased among women born between the 1930s and the early-1950s. However, the opposite trend holds true for men, resulting in a gender convergence in work complexity. We observe a subsequent standstill of the mid-career complexity trend across both genders, followed by a modest decline for the last observed cohorts. Analyses point to educational expansion as an important driver of the initial increase of early-career complexity. Taken together, this study affirms an initial shift to more work life complexity in the twentieth century, yet we find no unidirectional trend toward more complexity over the last decades.

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