Do Domestic Educations Even Out the Playing Field? Ethnic Labor Market Gaps in Sweden

Lena Nekby, Roger Vilhelmsson () and Gülay Özcan ()
Additional contact information
Roger Vilhelmsson: Swedish Agency for Government Employers, Postal: Box 3267, 103 65 Stockholm, Sweden
Gülay Özcan: Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University, Postal: Department of Economics, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

No 2007:6, Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The importance of investing in host country-specific human capital such as domestic language proficiency and domestic education is often cited as a determining factor for the labor market success of immigrants. This suggests that entirely domestic educations should even out the playing field providing equal labor market opportunities for natives and immigrants with similar (domestic) educations. This study follows a cohort of students from Swedish compulsory school graduation in 1988 until 2002 in order to document ethnic differences in education, including grades and field of education, and subsequent labor market outcomes. Results indicate both initial differences in youth labor market status and long term differences in employment rates, most notably for those with Non-European backgrounds. Differences in level or field of domestic education cannot explain persistent employment gaps. However, employment gaps are driven by differences among those with secondary school only. No employment or income gaps are found for the university educated.

Keywords: Ethnic minorities; Education; Employment; Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J15 J71 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2007-05-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.ne.su.se/paper/wp07_06.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Domestic Educations Even Out the Playing Field? Ethnic Labor Market Gaps in Sweden (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2007_0006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Stockholm, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Jensen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).