Universities are often viewed as engines of local economic growth that could mitigate rural depopulation. However, university studies might make individuals more prone to move. We explore this issue in a quasi‐experiment arising due to a sudden reduction in the number of student places at a regional university in northern Sweden in 1998. We find that the reduction in student places affected both educational choices and long‐term migration. Women studied at a university further from home and became more mobile, while men neither studied nor moved. Also, to study at a distant university had a larger impact on migration than studies nearby. This heterogeneity contributes to the understanding of how education affects migration from rural areas.

This study is the first to evaluate the setting up aid (SUA), in the Rural Development Programme. For Sweden, we investigate if the aid, firstly, speeds up the transition process to become manager of a farm and, secondly, affects income from farming and survival of the farm. The approach builds on a regression discontinuity design and explores an age 40–the eligibility requirement in the SUA. We find that the SUA has an impact on the transition to farm management, as well as it increases income from farming and farm survival. Consequently, the aid is likely to fulfil its aim of attracting young people into farming.

Ill health in early life has a significant negative impact on school grades, grade repetition, educational level, and labor market outcomes. However, less is known about qualitative socio-economic consequences of a health shock in childhood or adolescence. We investigate the relationship between onset of type 1 diabetes up to age 15 and the probability of choosing and completing a health-oriented path at upper secondary and university level of education. We analyze the Swedish Childhood Diabetes Register, the National Educational Register, and other population registers in Sweden for 2756 people with type 1 diabetes and 10,020 matched population controls. Educational decisions are modeled as unsorted series of binary choices to assess the choice of educational field as a potential mechanism linking early life health to adult outcomes. The analyses reject the hypothesis of no systematic differences in choice of educational field between people with and without type 1 diabetes at both levels. The results are robust to selection on ability proxies and across sensitivity analysis. We conclude that the observed pro health-oriented educational choices among people with type 1 diabetes in our data are consistent with disease onset in childhood and adolescence having qualitative impact on life-course choices.

Economic research on child health and future labor market outcomes has mainly focused on children with impaired health themselves, and only recently begun to assess spillover effects for siblings. Yet, the challenge to accommodate a family's routines within the requirements of a complex and time-consuming disease is most likely to spillover on siblings. While the burden of ill health and managing a disease may have adverse effects, living with a disease may still give families useful experiences and skills that favor future labor market outcomes. Therefore, the potential labor market impacts of growing up with a sick sibling could be both positive and negative. This study investigates differences in the progression of annual labor earnings between siblings of children with type 1-diabetes and population controls. The data is based on detailed Swedish longitudinal registers, covering annual labor earnings in the years 1990-2010 for 764 siblings of 764 children with diabetes and 5506 population controls born in 1962-1971, and follow individuals between ages 19-48. The results indicate that brothers of children with type 1-diabetes have lower earnings growth than controls, while sisters' earnings growth appears unaffected. Consequently, spillovers from one family member to another might differ within a family.