Conventional approaches define income poverty as a binary status, implying that being poor or nonpoor is equivalent across groups. The authors propose a novel visualization that moves beyond head count rates to display group-specific income distributions relative to the poverty threshold, simultaneously illustrating poverty prevalence, poverty gaps, and what the authors term poverty buffers: the distance above the threshold capturing income security. The authors apply this approach to all children aged 0 to 18 years in Sweden in 2022, by mother’s country of birth. The visualization reveals three patterns obscured by standard indicators. First, head count poverty rates vary dramatically, from 8 percent to 77 percent across groups. Second, average poverty gaps are surprisingly similar despite vast differences in prevalence, reflecting stark stratification by parental migration background. Third, poverty buffers reveal cumulative advantage: lower poverty rates coincide with substantially greater income security. By rendering gaps, buffers, and full distributions in a single figure, this visualization exposes dimensions of inequality that no single poverty measure captures alone.

Abstract Many ethnic and racial minorities experience higher unemployment rates than majority populations. Recent research in this area has largely focused on inequalities in getting a job—through employer discrimination in hiring—using field experiments. While these studies typically identify significant levels of discrimination, they rarely examine or discuss how hiring discrimination contributes to ethnic employment penalties at the aggregate level. Our study draws attention to the role of ethnic and racial inequalities in getting a job but also in remaining employed and avoiding unemployment as factors contributing to aggregate ethnic employment penalties. Our analysis employs population register data from Sweden to estimate unemployment entry and exit rates for the majority and ten groups of children of immigrants (the second generation, G2). Based on counterfactual scenarios we conclude that the substantially higher unemployment rates among the G2 are driven by their higher risk of becoming unemployed rather than their lower chances of becoming employed. Our findings indicate that hiring discrimination and other reasons for inequalities in getting a job play a less significant role than sometimes assumed in explaining ethnic employment penalties—at least in the context of Sweden.

This brief report delves into the poverty dynamics of second-generation immigrant (G2) children in Sweden and Finland, comparing them with their peers from the majority population. These are unique contexts to examine such socioeconomic inequalities since they are the two highest ranked countries in terms of the Migrant Integration Policy Index. This study draws on longitudinal full-population register data from 2011–2019 for children aged 0–4. This study contributes to existing research by providing a detailed, up-to-date analysis of socioeconomic disparities between a wide range of second-generation immigrant groups and majority children during early childhood—a period widely recognized as critical for development and strongly influenced by work-family reconciliation and family welfare policies. Findings reveal significant inequalities with G2 children facing longer exposure to poverty, higher poverty persistence and higher poverty entry rates than majority children. Interestingly, the G2’s longer exposure to poverty is not due to a higher likelihood of remaining poor, but rather a greater risk of falling into poverty. The study underscores the severe poverty levels among some immigrant groups, G2 Somalis being the chief example, as a critical challenge to equality and social stability in both countries.

BACKGROUND Families in Europe are increasingly exposed to economic insecurity, which may heighten their risk of material deprivation. Coping strategies-typically involving employment by family members-may help mitigate such risks. However, the ability to adopt such strategies and their effectiveness may depend on the welfare context and the presence of small children, an aspect that remains under-investigated. OBJECTIVE This paper examines the role of the female partner's employment as a coping strategy against material deprivation in response to the male partner's loss of earnings, distinguishing between buffering (stable employment) and resilience (entry into employment). METHODS We used longitudinal EU-SILC data (2004-2019) for 31 European countries and applied first-difference models. We distinguished between couples with and without children aged 0-5 years, and compared outcomes across six European country clusters: Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, Continental, Southern, Central-Eastern, and Baltic. We analysed both the prevalence and effectiveness of buffering and resilience strategies. RESULTS Male earnings loss is associated with a substantial increase in material deprivation, regardless of the presence of small children. Buffering is more prevalent among families without small children and in more defamilised contexts, such as Nordic and Continental European countries. Resilience is more frequent among families with small children, especially in Baltic countries. Regarding effectiveness, buffering mitigates the impact of earnings loss in some countries, regardless of the presence of small children. By contrast, resilience is largely ineffective. CONTRIBUTION This study shows that although stable female employment is an effective coping strategy, employment activation remains fragile and highly context-dependent. Families with small children are more likely to rely on employment activation than families without small children; however, the capacity of employment activation to cushion material deprivation is limited and uncertain. Thus, policy efforts should prioritise support for maternal employment continuity.

The literature shows that immigrants who acquire citizenship tend to achieve better labour market outcomes than those who do not, though this may reflect positive selection rather than a causal effect. This study is the first to examine the consequences of citizenship acquisition for immigrants in Italy, a country with rising naturalisation rates and persistent ethnic penalties. Using nationally representative survey and register data for 2016, we compared natives, naturalised and non-naturalised immigrants on employment, socio-economic attainment and earnings. To disentangle selection from causal effects, we applied growth curve models and two-way fixed effects. Results show that naturalised immigrants have higher socio-economic attainment and earnings than their non-naturalised counterparts, but similar employment trajectories. These advantages are more pronounced among women. Overall, findings suggest that improved outcomes among naturalised immigrants are largely driven by positive selection into naturalisation, rather than by the acquisition of citizenship itself.

This study focuses on housing inequalities across diverse social groups with respect to two housing indicators: subjective housing discrimination; and objective housing deprivation. By scrutinizing the correspondence in inequalities between the two indicators, we enhance the measurement of housing inequality and at the same time we shed light on the relationship between subjective and objective dimensions of housing— a relationship that has received little empirical examination so far. Existing research suggests that housing discrimination can contribute to housing deprivation through two channels: inadequate information and limited economic resources. Our focus is the post-2008 housing market crash era in Ireland. We use two separate large-scale individual-level surveys, the QNHS (2004, 2010, 2014) for analysing housing discrimination and SILC (2014, 2015) for analysing housing deprivation. Our findings reveal a robust convergence between perceptions of housing discrimination and objective housing deprivation across various social groups. Traditionally vulnerable groups—such as young individuals, those with disabilities, non-natives (excluding EU citizenship holders), single parents, and individuals without children—experience both discrimination and deprivation. Notably, certain groups exhibit persistent disparities in discrimination and disadvantage, even after considering factors like human capital, regional and tenure differences.

This article studies wage mobility during the early career in West Germany and the United States. We examine the extent of intragenerational wage fluctuations, whether they structure into upward mobility trends or remain volatile variations, and whether mobility aligns with classical stratification dimensions (gender, social origin, and education). We highlight three main findings. First, intragenerational wage fluctuations are stronger in the United States than in West Germany. Second, wage fluctuations translate into steeper trends of upward mobility, lower trend heterogeneity, and lower year-to-year volatility in West Germany than in the United States. Last, there is persistent intragenerational wage inequality by gender, social origin, and education but no striking differences between the patterns in the two countries. These results point toward the idea that higher wage fluctuations in the United States do not reflect opportunities for upward mobility but, rather, uncertainty around the prospects of wage progression.

In this chapter, we investigate labour market integration among immigrants in Italy, analysing the ethnic gap at labour market entry and its development over the life course to determine whether initial disadvantages strengthen or diminish. In particular, we compare native Italians with three immigrant groups: (i) immigrants who earned their highest level of education and made their first transition into the labour market in Italy (including second-generation immigrants), (ii) immigrants who obtained educational credentials in their country of origin but entered the labour market in Italy, and (iii) immigrants who both gained education and entered the labour market in their origin country. We study inequalities with respect to several labour market outcomes, including time spent and channels used to find the first job and career trajectories in occupational status. We do this following school-leavers from the time they transition from school to work and through the early stage of their working career (up to ten years from labour market entry). Analyses are based on data from the "Multipurpose Survey on Households: Families, Social Subjects and Life Cycle" (FSS, 2016).

This paper studies income trajectories after unemployment and their stratification by levels of education in Germany and the United States. The literature recognizes that unemployment hits individuals’ incomes differently according to the society’s specific mobility regime. Accordingly, this paper investigates how the labor market, the welfare state as well as the household buffer income losses following unemployment, and how this varies across educational levels, between sexes and in comparative perspective. Empirical analyses are based on CNEF (SOEP and PSID) data and employ distributed fixed-effects models. Results show that institutions play a considerable role in reducing the consequences of unemployment. The role of each institution, however, varies across levels of education, being stronger either for the lower educated or for the higher educated individuals. These complex processes result in very similar trajectories in disposable household income across levels of education, with the exception of German men for which inequality penalizes the lower educated. For German men, while the equalizing role of the state almost perfectly counterbalances the un-equalizing role of the household, initial educational inequality in the labour market translates into inequality in final welfare as captured by disposable household income.

Many immigrant groups disproportionately experience unemployment and this disadvantage often extends to their children—the second generation. This paper contributes to this stream of research by studying unemployment dynamics of the ancestral population and second-generation immigrants in Sweden. In particular, we ask: does unemployment persistence differ between ancestral Swedes and 10 second-generation immigrant groups? We answer this question using correlated dynamic random-effects logit models to study the effect of past on current unemployment—also known as genuine state dependence. We use Swedish register data to follow individuals over their early working careers. The results indicate that although past unemployment has a similar relative effect on current unemployment across the ancestry groups, past unemployment increases the probability of current unemployment (absolute effect) more among second-generation Middle-Eastern, Turkish, and Southern European immigrants. Because of higher baseline levels of unemployment, the labour market consequences of similar relative effects are more pronounced among the second generation as compared to ancestral Swedes. The paper concludes by elaborating on the reasons behind these contrasting results while highlighting the importance of examining heterogeneous effects on both the relative and absolute scales.

AbstractThis paper investigates changes over the period 2005 to 2014 in material deprivation dynamics of social risk groups in 11 European countries covering a range of welfare regimes. The period covered experienced dramatic economic change, encompassing periods of boom, the Great Recession and early recovery. Social risk groups are defined as groups which differ in the challenges that they face in converting resources into desired outcomes. The comparative element of the paper allows us to assess whether certain welfare regimes were better at protecting more vulnerable groups. Results, based on the longitudinal component of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and on analysis of deprivation dynamics between pairs of years, showed large inequality between groups in the risk of persistent deprivation – with lone parents and people with disability most at risk in all countries. Variation across welfare regimes was restricted to the contrast between the liberal and the remaining regimes. Countries belonging to the former regime (UK and Ireland) were distinctive in showing the largest social risk gap in persistent deprivation and were the only ones which experienced substantial polarisation between groups with the Great Recession.

Health literature shows that unemployment has a gendered effect on health. However, whether men or women are more affected and why remains unclear. We assume that unemployment harms women less than men because of two mechanisms: social roles theories and health selection. First, the availability and centrality in individuals' lives of roles other than employment may reduce the detrimental effect of unemployment for women. Second, the gendered impact of unemployment on health results from the different ways selection mechanisms operate across genders. Moreover, these two mechanisms may operate differently in different contexts - for example, across different gender regimes. We investigate this by pursuing a three-step comparative approach. The analysis relies on EU-SILC data covering Italy and Sweden for 2004 to 2015 and SOEP data for Germany (1995-2017) and applies correlated dynamic random-effects probit models. While we find weak support for the role of health selection in shaping the relations between unemployment, health, and gender, our empirical results are in line with the hypothesis of a larger gendered effect in older (vs younger) cohorts, western (vs eastern) Germany and Italy (vs. Sweden). Future empirical research needs to directly address the role of gender regimes in moderating such complex relationships.

This paper studies the unobserved factors accounting for the stickiness of unemployment and for its micro-level longitudinal accumulation. The paper disentangles 'genuine state dependence' from unobserved heterogeneity in individual characteristics and accounts for their weight and possible interplay. In addition, it proposes an innovative framework for investigating heterogeneity in unemployment persistence. In particular, the paper documents variation in unemployment dynamics across workforce segments defined by unobserved factors associated with patterns of past unemployment. Analyses apply correlated dynamic random-effects probit models to EU-SILC data from 2004 to 2015 for four European countries (DK, FR, IT and UK). Empirical results indicate that unobserved heterogeneity, genuine state dependence and their interaction, are relevant factors to take into account in explaining the recurrence and accumulation of unemployment and long-term unemployment risks. The analysis also shows how the role of these two factors and, relatedly, the dynamics of risks accumulation vary according to different institutional contexts. Finally, the paper discusses how the joint evaluation of unobserved heterogeneity, genuine state dependence and their interplay can provide fruitful insights for theories of cumulative advantages and the efficient design of policy measures intended to address the accumulation of occupational penalties over time.

Despite national differences in youth employment, many countries share striking similarities in the uneven sectoral distribution of job opportunities for young women and men in Europe. A shift-share analysis of European Labour Force data identifies youth-friendly sectors, how this varies between countries, and how this changed during the Great Recession. This reveals how youth job opportunities were lost because the sector shrank or because employers were less likely to offer full-time, permanent contracts. New jobs for youth were more likely to be in part-time and temporary employment. Youth vulnerability to unemployment is contingent not only on employers' engagement with institutions shaping school-to-work transitions but also on gender segregation and to the fact that some sectors have been particularly fragile during the economic crisis. Future research needs to link institutional effects with employers' business strategies to understand how these shape job opportunities for young women and men.

This paper uses data from the 2014 Special Module of the European Social Survey on attitudes to immigration to investigate attitudes towards Muslim and 'White immigrants in Ireland. Drawing on theories of social identity, ethnic threat and social distance, the paper develops hypotheses about which factors influence attitudes to Muslim immigrants, and how and why they might differ from attitudes to White immigrants. Comparing these attitudes, we find evidence of an "ethnic hierarchy" in Ireland, with more positive attitudes to White than to Muslim immigrants. We also find that age and religious practice are associated with attitudes towards Muslim immigrants, but have only weak effects on attitudes towards White immigrants. The analysis reveals that an international terrorist attack had a negative effect on attitudes to Muslim immigrants but not on attitudes to White immigrants.

ESRI research, funded by the Department of Justice and Equality, finds that relative to the Irish population, migrants are fairly evenly distributed across neighbourhoods in Ireland. This is positive, as migrant integration is more challenging in places where migrants are segregated from the host population. The study examines where in Ireland migrants live, how segregated they are from the Irish-born population and the types of areas they live in. The analysis is carried out for all migrants, and then separately for EU migrants, non-EU migrants, and people with poor English language proficiency.