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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon

Sustaining the welfare and working life model in a diversified society

Alternative title: Bærekraftige institusjoner i et multikulturelt samfunn

Awarded: NOK 8.0 mill.

The project goals were to (i) investigate the effects of exposure to ethnic diversity on trust, (ii) examine the role of ancestry culture in integration across generations, with particular focus on the transmission of gender norms, and (iii) evaluate the effectiveness of certain integration policies. The ambition has been providing policy-relevant estimates of causal effects, combining state-of-the-art econometric methods and analyses of data from large administrative registers, field and laboratory experiments, and surveys through interdisciplinary cooperation. "Ancestry Culture and Female Employment-An Analysis Using Second Generation Siblings" (European Sociological Review, 2017) studies the effects of cultural background on female employment among Norwegian-born with immigrant backgrounds in Norway. Using register data of siblings, the study reveals that women with parents from countries where women work less have lower labor market participation in Norway. The effect is weaker than previously found and the article shows how methods in previous studies will often overestimate the effect of cultural background measured by patterns in the parents' country of birth. In "Ancestry Culture, Assimilation, and Voter Turnout in Two Generations" (Political Behavior 2020), the focus is voter turnout, for which the project has unique data. We find that gender traditionalism at the country of origin significantly correlates with the gender gap in the first generation, but has no effect in the second generation. Together, our results suggest that early institutional exposure is important for political assimilation. In «Culture and Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete» (unpublished) we investigate how culture affects the gender differences in willingness to compete in a large and pre-registered experiment. The study finds a smaller gender gap in willingness to compete for individuals with parents born in more gender-equal countries. The difference is driven both by men with parents from more gender-equal countries wanting to compete less and by women with the same ancestry wanting to compete more. "Trust, ethnic diversity, and personal contact: A field experiment" (Journal of Public Economics, 2019) studies how close personal contact with minorities affects trust. It exploits a field experiment in the armed forces randomly assigning soldiers to rooms with or without ethnic minorities. Close personal contact with minorities increases trust towards immigrants in an incentivized trust game. "How Settlement Locations and Local Networks Influence Immigrant Political Integration" (American Journal of Political Science, 2020), investigates peer and neighborhood effects on voter turnout for refugees. Using Norwegian administrative register data, we leverage variation in the placement of refugees to assess the consequences of assignment to particular neighborhoods. We find that the difference in turnout between refugees initially placed in different neighborhoods is large. Our findings suggest that early exposure to politically engaged neighbors and peer cohorts increases immigrants? turnout over the long run. ?Rising segregation in Norwegian city regions? (Tidsskrift for boligforskning, 2020) maps out the settlement patterns in Norwegian city-regions over the last 25 years by adult income rank within neighborhoods. We find signs of rising segregation in Norway after the year 2000, especially in the Oslo area. Immigration is an important reason, primarily because immigrants settle more segregated than Norwegian-born. The results also indicate that Norwegian-born have settled more segregated in regions with a high immigrant share. The study «Family migration, income requirement and labor market outcomes of refugees» (unpublished) analyses the consequences of introducing income requirements for family migration for spouses of refugees with residence permits in Norway through a reform in 2003. We find that the reform led to a permanent reduction in family migration for both men and women. Men who come to Norway after the reform had higher income and employment, but only the first five years in Norway. The income requirement had no effect on female labor force participation. "Male Fertility: Facts, Distribution and Drivers of Inequality" (unpublished) documents new facts on the distribution of male fertility and its relationship with men's labor market outcomes. Data from Norwegian registers show that rates of male childlessness in recent cohorts are 72% among the lowest five percent of earners but only 11% among the highest earners and that this gap widened by almost 20 percentage points over the last thirty years. Using firm bankruptcies as a source of variation in job loss and earnings, the study shows that men experiencing negative labor market shocks are less likely to get a child and be partnered and that these effects are persistent up to 15 years after the event.

-Prosjektet har ført til flere publiserte artikler i godt anerkjente tidsskrift, og flere er underveis. -Det har bidratt med innsikt i temaer som (i) innflytelse fra innvandreres kulturbakgrunn og oppvekstmiljø på deltakelse i arbeidslivet og ved valg (ii) endringer i holdninger til minoriteter gjennom interaksjon, (iii) kjønnsforskjeller i konkurransevilje, (iv) bostedssegregering og (iv) effekter av regelverk for familieinnvandring. -Innsikten bidrar til forståelse av forskjeller i arbeidsmarkedet og politisk deltakelse mellom grupper -Kunnskap om effekter av regelverk for familieinnvandring gir grunnlag for utforming av innvandringspolitikken -Prosjektet har styrket flerfaglig samarbeid og gitt erfaringer fra kobling av data fra registre, spørreundersøkelser og lab-eksperimenter som kan bli nyttige, både for prosjektmedlemmene og kolleger i forskersamfunnet.

The project outlines an ambitious research agenda, addressing challenges to sustaining the welfare and working life model in an era of increasing immigration and ethnic diversity. The project is comprehensive, covering the essential elements of sustaining the welfare state in the diversified society: The economic integration of immigrants; the impacts of exposure to ethnic diversity; and the role of ancestry culture for integration across generations. The project is innovative. We combine state-of-the art econometric methods and analyses of data from large administrative registers, field and laboratory experiments, and surveys. The register data cover longitudinal records for the full population over 25 years, including residence, education, work, and welfare, augmented with novel microdata on political participation. We study effects of exposure on trust in field experiments coordinated with the army and in analyses of election outcomes. We examine the roles of ancestry culture and gender norms in incentivized laboratory experiments, survey data, and epidemiological analyses that combine register data for the second generation and cultural indicators from the parental ancestry country. The project has strong policy relevance. It investigates directly the effects of programs targeted at newly arrived refugees and income requirements for family reunification on long-term labor market integration, as well as political participation in the immigrant population. For each program, we have identified explicit strategies for causal analysis. The project is multidisciplinary, bringing together a team of leading Norwegian researchers and distinguished international scholars from the fields of Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology.

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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon