Suchergebnisse

This article examines the transition from compulsory school to education and work for children of immigrants and native Danes by focusing on NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) status. Using administrative register data, I first examined the overrepresentation of children of immigrants in the NEET group three years after completion of compulsory school. I then analysed: (a) whether differences in family background and grades can explain this overrepresentation and (b) whether NEET status during this period is associated with a high risk of NEET status four years later (i.e., seven years after compulsory school completion). My results show higher NEET rates for children of immigrants than for native Danes. Regression analysis of three year groups suggests, unfavourable family characteristics explain the higher probability of NEET status among children of immigrants in two of these groups. NEET status in the three-year period after school completion is associated with higher risk of NEET status four years later for both children of immigrants and native Danes.

Using a mixed methods approach, this article examines gendered patterns of employment and of unemployment benefit uptake among Turkish marriage migrants in Denmark. The results show that men use co-ethnic networks to access entry positions. Subsequent eligibility for unemployment benefits enable these men to search for better jobs. Women enter employment more slowly and tell of such entry being related to entering the unemployment insurance system, enabling them to periodically conform to gendered expectations as homemakers. Pakistani marriage migrants display similar patterns, indicating the centrality of this institutional arrangement in low-skilled marriage migrants' active adaptation to a new society.

While considerable research exists on US immigrant groups living in extended households, little is available on such households in Europe. Using a combination of register data, survey data and qualitative interview data, this article analyzes extended household living among Turkish immigrants in Denmark, and compares the findings to the situation in Turkey. The analysis shows that as many as 78% of young female and 38% of young male marriage migrants began life in Denmark in extended households in the late 1990's. However, these figures dropped by approximately one-third over the first five years of married life in Denmark. Another finding is that the share of Turkish males in Denmark who moved into extended households with their brides' parents is far greater than the share of their counterparts doing so in Turkey. Thus matrilineal extended household living is much more common in a migratory context than in a non-migratory one. Using qualitative interview data, the article also explores how both gender and life cycle stage affect extended household living arrangements, and shows that women in particular may be strongly affected. The effects can be a positively perceived support for child care and household work, but may also be a negatively perceived confinement to domesticity. The confinement to domesticity is partly achieved through a pooling of household income that allows young women to remain outside the labor force. While many young couples move to nuclear living after some years in Denmark, a number of extended families continue cohabiting for decades.

The focus of this paper is on poverty among immigrants and refugees aged 60 years and older coming to Denmark from countries outside of the OECD, with an emphasis on immigrants who came as guest workers before 1974, as refugees and as family members and marriage partners (tied movers) of the individuals coming as guest workers and as refugees. A large proportion of people in this group were fairly young at the time of their arrival in Denmark. Guest workers who came before 1974 and refugees and tied movers who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s are now either close to or above the age of 60, with conditional eligibility to a labour market-related early retirement programme or to the State pension. Poverty rates by national background are described using alternative household concepts. A number of background factors with relevance for poverty are summarised. We focus on age, gender, marital status, occupational status at age 55, and duration of residence, and find major differences between migrant groups and between immigrants and natives regarding how income is dependent at different ages on market income, pensions and benefits. We also present a number of regressions aiming at explaining differences in the risk of poverty risk in terms of these background factors.

"The purpose of this paper is to analyse the character of response bias in a Danish survey among native Danes and immigrants from Turkey, Iran and Pakistan and thus enable the tailoring of future surveys to particular immigrants groups. The authors find that both contact rates and cooperation rates are lower for immigrants, leading to a significantly lower overall response rate. They also find important differences between groups - immigrants from Pakistan are especially difficult to reach, while refusals are particularly high among those from Turkey. Language is likewise important as a very large share of women could not be interviewed in Danish. The authors analyse not only the determinants of the probability of contact and the probability of cooperation but also the determinants of overall nonresponse, by looking at individual characteristics and observable interviewer characteristics. They find that the characteristics of the sample persons are important for both contact and cooperation rates, with different factors affecting each. Yet none of the observable interviewer characteristics appear to affect the response rate. Furthermore, after controlling for all the other variables, they find that the lower probability of response among immigrants compared to native Danes persists. The analysis clearly points to the need for tailoring surveys directed to immigrant groups to avoid response bias." (author's abstract)

During the last two decades most Western countries have experienced increased net immigration as well as increased income inequality. This article analyzes the effects on income inequality of an increased number of immigrants in Denmark and Germany for the 20- year period 1984-2003 and how the impact of the increased number of immigrants differs between the two countries. We find higher inequality for immigrants than natives in Denmark but vice versa for Germany. Over the period 1984-2003, this particular inequality gap has narrowed in both countries. At the same time, the contribution of immigrants to overall inequality has increased, primarily caused by increased between-group inequality. The share of immigrants in the population is more important for the change in overall inequality in Denmark than in Germany, while the opposite is the case for inequality among immigrants.

Social assistance benefits are the last resort in national social protection systems, and decentralizing reforms leading to increasing local discretion over implementation of national legislation was an international trend frequently referred to as devolution. More recent reforms have instead often implied recentralization and/or involved mandatory institutional cooperation between welfare agencies located at different hierarchical levels. In contrast to North America, there is little European evidence on the extent to which shifting responsibilities influence benefit levels and benefit receipt. Using individual level register data from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and applying a difference-in-difference approach, we link changes in legislation to changes in municipal benefits as well as caseloads during the period 1990–2010. We only find indications of reform effects linked to distinct benefit centralization, concluding that other reforms were too insubstantial to have an impact. Combined with earlier evidence, this suggests that in order to have an impact, welfare reform requires marked changes in authority.

The article explores the extent to which the organization of vocational tracks in upper secondary school affects the labour market risks associated with early school exit. The Nordic countries share many features, but the upper secondary school systems differ significantly in how their vocational tracks are organized. Denmark and Norway have dual vocational tracks, that is, they combine school-based education and workplace apprenticeships, whereas in Finland and Sweden they are primarily school based. We analyse administrative longitudinal data from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s in the four countries and find the highest vocational track dropout rates in Norway and the lowest in Finland. The results indicate that the relative labour market effect of dropping out from a vocational track is most detrimental in Norway. It is also in Norway that we find the greatest gender differences in this respect.