This report analyses a large-scale survey of living conditions among immigrants in Norway. Data were collected by Statistics Norway in 2016 and covered 12 of the largest immigrant groups in Norway. This aim of the present report is analyse the kinds of welfare problems experienced by immigrants. Which immigrants accumulate most welfare problems? What are the main predictors of welfare problems among immigrants in Norway? How does the accumulation of welfare problems relate to general life satisfaction among immigrants? In addition, we compare the accumulation of welfare problems among immigrants with the total population.

An early draft of this report was presented at the International Forum on Migration Statistics 2018, in Paris in January. A more recent draft was presented internally at a seminar for migration researchers at Oslo Metropolitan University. We would like to thank participants at both events for constructive and valuable feedback. This project was commissioned and financed by the Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi). We would like to thank IMDi for making possible this interesting and challenging project, and especially Anja Wedde Sveen and Eivind Hageberg, both at IMDi, for cooperation underway. Project leader has been Kristian Rose Tronstad of the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, NIBR. Tronstad has conducted the statistical analyses and written most of the report. Marit Nygaard at NIBR has contributed on analysis and discussion of the results. Miia Bask at Norwegian Social Research, NOVA, has written about the theory of accumulation of welfare problems in Chapter 3.

Despite a vast literature investigating the effects of childhood living conditions, there are few studies that investigate the significance of the timing of economic hardship during childhood. This study used the 1987 Finnish Birth Cohort - including all children born in Finland in 1987 (N=59,476) to explore the patterns of childhood economic hardship. Sequence analysis was utilized to extract the patterns of economic hardship, measured as social assistance recipiency (SA). This resulted in five clusters: No SA at all; Occasional SA; Occasional SA, more during early 2000’s; Occasional SA, more during the 1990’s, and Moderate to heavy SA throughout. We then examined the relationship between childhood economic hardship patterns and five different later adolescence and early adulthood outcomes: Cohort members own adulthood SA recipiency, Psychiatric care, Criminal convictions, Early school leaving and Teenage pregnancy (for girls). We found strong relationships between all these outcomes and childhood economic hardship patterns. For example, regression analyses with No SA at all as a reference category showed large OR, especially regarding cohort members own adulthood SA. It seemed also that later childhood economic hardship was more harmful than the earlier economic hardship regarding adulthood SA recipiency.

This paper uses longitudinal Swedish data and investigates the accumulation and persistence of welfare problems over time. The data set was compiled in a first wave in 1979, a second wave in 1986–1987, a third wave in 1994–1995, and a fourth wave in 2002–2003 (N = 7,967). First, the results demonstrate that all welfare problems have a tendency to become persistent. For example, the probability of suffering from the lack of a close friend in the fourth wave was 57.1 % if the individual suffered from this welfare problem in the third wave. Second, economic problems constituted the welfare problem with the most associations with other welfare problems. Third, the accumulation of welfare problems significantly differed between different categories of individuals. For example, the accumulation of welfare problems was higher in men compared with women, immigrants compared with native Swedes, single individuals compared with individuals in couples, and poorly educated individuals compared with highly educated individuals. Finally, longitudinal analyses indicated individuals in certain categories have experienced cumulative disadvantages in welfare even during periods when individuals in other categories have experienced a positive trend in welfare. One such example is single parents during the period between 1979 and 1986–1987.

To foster a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind inequality in society, it is crucial to work with well-defined concepts associated with such mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to define cumulative (dis) advantage and the Matthew effect. We argue that cumulative (dis) advantage is an intra-individual micro-level phenomenon, that the Matthew effect is an inter-individual macro-level phenomenon and that an appropriate measure of the Matthew effect focuses on the mechanism or dynamic process that generates inequality. The Matthew mechanism is, therefore, a better name for the phenomenon, where we provide a novel measure of the mechanism, including a proof-of-principle analysis using disposable personal income data. Finally, because socio-economic theory should be able to explain cumulative (dis) advantage and the Matthew mechanism when they are detected in data, we discuss the types of models that may explain the phenomena. We argue that interactions-based models in the literature traditions of analytical sociology and statistical mechanics serve this purpose.

We examined the occurrence and coexistence of externalising and internalising problem behaviour among Swedish boys and girls, and investigated whether there are differences in the accumulation of problems among adolescents with different behavioural, demographic and social characteristics. The results are discussed in the context of self-salience schemas. The source material comprised all ninth grade pupils in a province in central Sweden in 2008 (N = 3,095). First, girls were found to be more prone to experience internalising problem behaviour, whereas no sex differences were found regarding externalising problem behaviour. Second, multidimensional scaling maps indicated that, compared with boys, self-esteem and the PsychoSomatic Problem (PSP) scale among girls more closely indicated externalising problem behaviour components, whereas anxiety was situated far from the other externalising problem behaviour indicators. Finally, linear regression analyses indicated family type as the primary explanatory background factor for externalising problem behaviour and economic hardship as the primary explanatory background factor for internalising problem behaviour.

This paper examines psycho-social distress among middle-aged and elderly Swedes. We analysed data on 3221 individuals who were 55 to 99 years old. Based on a latent class analysis, we identified four latent classes. Two classes were associated with higher levels of psycho-social problem accumulation. The class with the lowest level of problem accumulation contained the greatest number of individuals, whereas the classes with the highest level of psycho-social distress contained the least number of individuals. The analysis showed that being a man, being married, being a native Swede, or having several hobbies was associated with a low likelihood of belonging to a latent class that was characterised by psycho-social distress. Moreover, being a woman, being between 55 and 65 years of age, or being a widow was associated with a high likelihood of belonging to a latent class that was characterised by the highest levels of problem accumulation.

In this chapter, we apply the expectancy-value model of motivation, particularly the family socialization aspect of the model (Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983; Eccles, 1994, 2007; Wigfield & Eccles, 2002) to address a number of key questions regarding gender differences in adult attainment, in particular educational attainment. When some individuals in the work force of today were children, what kinds of expectations did they have for themselves? What expectations did their parents have for them? Did these expectations vary for girls and boys? Were parents' expectations about their children's future education related to the actual education that these adolescents later attained in midlife? How did the child's academic ability and characteristics of the family figure into this picture? We present original empirical findings, drawing on data collected for a Swedish longitudinal study that spans from childhood to middle adulthood. In line with the expectancy-value model of motivation, the family's socioeconomic status (SES) was identified as an important predictor of several outcomes. Consistent with the model, for both genders, the family's SES and parental educational expectations in middle adolescence predicted middle adult educational attainment. The importance of grades differed by gender in that the mathematics grade was a statistically significant predictor of middle adult educational attainment for males, while for females grades in Swedish were a statistically significant predictor of middle adult educational attainment. In this chapter, we situated these study findings in the wider pertinent scholarly literature and discussed the implications of our results as they might relate to efforts to promote equitable and optimal life chances for the current generation of European girls and boys.