Suchergebnisse

"At the beginning of the 1960s, Swedish researchers started a sociological study of all children born in Stockholm in 1953, Project Metropolitan. This book describes the project's at times dramatic history, where issues of personal integrity and the role of social sciences were heavily debated. These discussions were fueled by the rapid and far-reaching digitalization in society at large and also within social sciences. As such, Project Metropolitan came to symbolize the benefits and potential risks related to an expanding body of research based on large groups of individuals and multiple register data sources.
At the outset, the project's founders sought to answer the following question: "Why do some get on better in life than others?" One of the main aims of the project was to study the long-term impact of conditions in childhood. The book therefore also includes an updated presentation of the main findings, as they have been conveyed in over 160 publications to date. These publications cover a wide array of topics and phenomena such as social mobility and education, substance abuse and crime, health and ill-health, peer influences and family relations, and adult lives of adopted children.
Today Project Metropolitan is known as the "Stockholm Birth Cohort Multigenerational Study (SBC Multigen)" and is still in full vigor. From its original group of 15,000 children, the study has become multi-generational by adding data about their parents, siblings, children, nieces and nephews. As they approach their late 60s, it will also be possible to follow these "children" into retirement and old-age.
In the concluding chapter the author discusses some of the challenges contemporary social research is facing. What are the current threats to academic freedom and what opportunities do the unique data registers in countries like Sweden provide?"

Despite a remarkable improvement in the general welfare of the Swedish population since the 1960s, the rate of housing evictions has rapidly increased in the same period This paper presents an analysis of factors associated with the growth in the eviction rate The main hypothesis models eviction rate growth as the unintended effect of Swedish housing policy, otherwise viewed as highly successful We also speculate about the relationship between homelessness and the evictions, suggesting that for Sweden the eviction rate and the prevalence of homelessness are negatively connected, i e. a high eviction rate is associated with a small number of homeless individuals. Data from two time periods, 1915-37 and 1950-81, are analyzed using ARIMA time series The period 1976-80 is, in addition, analyzed with pooled cross-section, time-series analysis.

Leadership research has always recognised the importance of childhood factors for the occupation of formal or informal leader positions later in life. Still, empirical research in the field has mainly been based on retrospective accounts from selective and small samples. Such research has also concentrated on individual traits and experiences, less on characteristics of the family. Our aim is to fill this void by prospectively examining the role of the family of origin on educational attainment and holding a managerial position in adulthood. Analyses were based on the Stockholm Multigenerational Study, including register and survey data, regarding 3,088 males born between 1950 and 1976 and their mothers' attitudes to education and child-rearing in the late 1960s. Our results showed a significant effect of family socio-economic status (SES) on managerial role occupancy in late adulthood. This effect was mainly mediated through educational level. However, a noteworthy share of the total effect of family SES was channelled through maternal attitudes towards education. Positive attitudes towards education in the home environment accounted for an equally large share of the total indirect effect of family SES as the offspring's cognitive capacity did. Authoritarian attitudes to child-rearing among mothers were also found to have a negative impact on cognitive capacity and educational level – two well-known antecedents to leader emergence. Parental attitudes may boost or modify structural characteristics and individual traits associated with holding formal leader roles such as a managerial position – but also showed an independent effect several decades later.

One of the main tasks of the armed forces is to recruit and select future soldiers and to identify potential officers. However, these procedures may have a wider societal impact beyond the borders of the military organization itself. This study aims to examine how compatible assessments of military leadership potential are with those in the labor market. Using longitudinal data concerning a large cohort of Swedish males who underwent mustering during the early 1970s, we analyzed the association between officer suitability assessments and managerial role occupancy at age 50 to 55, while controlling for socio-demographic factors in childhood and adulthood. We found a high level of predictability, whereby those who were ranked highest were four times more likely to hold managerial positions than those with the lowest ranking. Results are discussed in relation to perceptions about leadership skills and possible institutional isomorphism between the armed forces and other societal organizations.

Research on leadership emergence has mainly focused on adulthood and relied on retrospective accounts of childhood factors. Based on a prospective cohort study of 7719 boys born in 1953, of which 5928 were later drafted, we explored individual differences in leadership emergence in childhood and early adulthood. The data set consisted of register data from different time points and a survey of the cohort in the 6th grade. As expected, cognitive ability, tallness and muscular power were decisive for assessment of military officer suitability. However, we also found a moderate to strong impact on this assessment score from social class, leadership aspirations in childhood, birth order, self-regulatory skills in school, parental support, and previous participation in extracurricular activities. Similarly, social class, cognitive ability, developmental experiences, and birth order were important for nominations as class party organizer in the 6th grade. Delay of gratification was not associated with these nominations at all and was neutralized by cognitive ability in relation to officer suitability. The results strongly support a life-cycle approach to leadership emergence.

Has the frequency of unemployment a tendency to increase the number of social assistance recipients, or does the relationship work the other way round? This article utilizes Swedish monthly data on aggregated open unemployment and means-tested social assistance recipiency in the period 1991—2004 and proposes a multiple time-series approach based on vector error-correction modelling in order to distinguish between theories about the direction of influence. First, we show that rates of unemployment and receipt of social assistance are co-integrated. Second, we demonstrate that adjustments to the long-run equilibrium are made through adjustments to the receipt of means-tested social assistance. This indicates that the frequency of social assistance recipiency reacts to changes in unemployment rather than vice versa. It is also shown that lagged changes in the number of social assistance recipients do not predict changes in rates of unemployment in the short term. Together, these findings demonstrate that the number of social assistance recipients does not increase the number of unemployed.

This study is intended as a contribution to the ongoing US and European debate on housing inequality and homelessness. We do this by focusing on the problems faced by the 'precariously housed', or people repeatedly threatened with eviction, in the advanced welfare state of Sweden. Our empirical analysis is based on a sample of individuals repeatedly threatened with eviction in Sweden in the period 1982-86. Using proportional hazard regressions, we show that the increase in risk for a new eviction threat for these individuals can best be explained by a combination of unfavorable social circumstances and difficult personal problems, both of which need to be addressed by housing policy.