Back to Basics – Literacy Proficiency, Immigration and Labour Market Outcomes in Sweden

Abstract

We explore how education, literacy skills and migrant origin affect employment and over‐qualification mismatch, using a simple model of human capital, standard regression methods and data from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). Sweden is an interesting case, as a compressed wage distribution makes thresholds to enter the labour market high for those with low education and low skills. Skill and education levels are high among the native‐born. At the same time, the high influx of humanitarian and family reunion migrants, who are on average less educated and less skilled than natives, increases the supply of low‐skilled labour. We find that substantial employment penalties all but disappear when controlling for migrants’ lower literacy proficiency. In contrast, the high incidence of over‐qualification mismatch among immigrants is little sensitive to literacy proficiency and demographic profiles. However, having participated in education and training activities in Sweden improves matching considerably, in particular if such activities are manifested in formal qualifications.

Longitudinal and spatial perspectives on the mismatch of tertiary educated migrant workers in the Czech labour market: The case of Ukrainians

“…Other studies examine further the role of education and training courses for overcoming the mismatch between education levels that are required and those that are offered (Bussi and Pareliussen, 2017). Moreover, access to local nonmigratory social networks has been highlighted (Aure, 2013), including the function of social networks (Cerna, 2016;Webb, 2015;Plöger and Becker, 2015;Chort, 2017;Munshi, 2003).…”

Improving school results and equity in compulsory education in Sweden

“…Sund (2009[20]) finds that such peer effects are stronger for Swedish pupils with unfavourable socio-economic backgrounds, and that these pupils thus lose more from segregation than pupils with favourable backgrounds gain ( Figure 7). Therefore, despite the lack of undisputable evidence of peer effects, school segregation risk depriving pupils of equal opportunities to achieve their potential and may even lower average school outcomes in Sweden (Skolverket, 2018[6]; Böhlmark, Holmlund and Lindahl, 2016 [21]; André, Pareliussen and Hwang, 2019 [7]; Yang Hansen and Gustafsson, 2016[22]). In response to this challenge, the Government initiated a public enquiry in 2018 to analyse increasing school segregation and propose policies to reduce it and foster equal opportunities within the compulsory school system.…”

“…More detailed rules and a more stringent inspection regime is an inevitable response to weak results in a highly decentralised system based on competition for funding following pupils. This is because the system to an extent encourages behaviour contrary to the public interest, such as lenient grading to attract pupils, or reducing costs at the expense of educational quality, as discussed later in this paper (Gustafsson, Sörlin and Vlachos, 2016[2]; Böhlmark, Holmlund and Lindahl, 2016 [21]). However, such a system encourages a culture of compliance with minimum legal requirements in cases where providers' interests conflict with public interests.…”

“…PISA shows no relationship between competition and results in cross-country comparisons (OECD, 2016 [4]). Competition and choice as implemented in Sweden increases school segregation (Skolverket, 2018[6]; Böhlmark, Holmlund and Lindahl, 2016 [21]; Yang Hansen and Gustafsson, 2016[22]). Furthermore, there is no evidence that it increases average results.…”

Increasing Income Inequality in the Nordics

“…The refugee immigration wave in 2014 and 2015 is not reflected in any of the studies mentioned above, but should be expected to amplify income inequality. Source: Authors' calculations based on the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (2012), following the methodology in Bussi and Pareliussen (2017).…”