Volume 38, Number 1 (Winter) 2003
Hansen, Jorgen, and Magnus Lofstrom. 2003. "Immigrant Assimilation and Welfare Participation: Do Immigrants Assimilate Into or Out of Welfare?" Journal of Human Resources 38(1):74-98.
This paper analyzes differences in welfare utilization between immigrants and natives in Sweden using a large panel data set for the years 1990 to 1996. We find that immigrants use welfare to a greater extent than natives and that differences cannot be explained by observable characteristics. Welfare participation decreases with time spent in Sweden. Refugees assimilate out of welfare at a faster rate than non refugee immigrants, but neither group is predicted to reach parity with natives. Increases in unemployment and immigration, as well as the change in the composition of immigrants, contributed to the increase in welfare utilization in Sweden.
Jorgen Hansen is an assistant professor of economics at Concordia University. Magnus Lofstrom is an assistant professor of economics and political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees, Thomas Bauer, Anders Björklund, Don DeVoretz, Lennart Flood, Bjorn Gustaffson, Dan-Olof Rooth, participants at the Canadian Economic Association's annual meeting 2000, the CEPR/TSER workshop at Bar-Ilan University, the Canadian International Labour Network's conference 2000, the European Economic Association's annual meeting 2000, and seminar participants at Gothenburg University, Lund University, SOFI, Simon Fraser University for helpful comments. Financial support from the European Commission (grant SOE2-C797-03052) and the Swedish Council for Social Research is gratefully acknowledged. The data used in this paper are provided by Statistics Sweden. For information about accessing these data and user restrictions, contact Statistics Sweden at <swestat@scb.se>.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X