American Economic Journal

Refugee Benefit Cuts

This paper analyzes the effects of Denmark’s Start Aid welfare reform that targets refugees. Implemented in 2002, it enables us to study not only the reform’s immediate effects but also its longer-term consequences and its repeal a decade later. The reform-induced large transfer cuts led to an increase in employment rates, but only in the short run. Overall, the reform increased poverty rates and led to a rise in subsistence crime. Moreover, local demand conditions generate substantial heterogeneity in the reform’s effects on immediate and longer-term employment.

14 May 2024

American Economic Journal

Unintended Consequences of Welfare Cuts on Children and Adolescents

This paper studies the effects of a large welfare benefit reduction on the children in the affected families. The welfare cut targeted adult refugees who received residency in Denmark, and it reduced their disposable income by 30 percent on average over the first five years. We show that children exposed to the welfare cut during preschool and school-age obtained lower GPAs, experienced reduced wellbeing and overall education levels, and suffered lower employment and earnings as adults. Children in their teens at exposure faced large increases in conviction probabilities for violent and property crimes.

13 May 2024

American Economic Journal – Policy

Attendance Boundary Policies and the Limits to Combating School Segregation

What is the efficacy of redrawing school attendance boundaries as a desegregation policy? To provide causal evidence on this question, we employ novel data with unprecedented detail on the universe of Danish children and exploit changes in attendance boundaries over time. Households defy reassignments to schools with lower socioeconomic status. There is a strong social gradient in defiance, as resourceful households are more sensitive to the student composition of new schools. We simulate school assignment policies and find that boundary changes that reassign areas to a highly disadvantaged school are ineffective at altering the socioeconomic composition at the disadvantaged school.

3 February 2024

Social Science & Medicine

From unequal injuries to unequal learning? Socioeconomic gradients in childhood concussions and the impact on children’s academic performance

Highlights • Child concussion rates are higher among families with lower earnings and education. • Concussion incidence and reading test scores are negatively correlated. • Difference-in-differences model controls for selection and identifies a causal effect. • The negative correlation is driven by selection and does not reflect a causal effect. • Social gradients in concussions do not lead to inequality in academic performance.

30 December 2023

Psychological Medicine

Suicides, drug poisonings, and alcohol-related deaths cluster with health and social disadvantage in 4.1 million citizens from two nations

Deaths of despair are a marker of inequalities in countries beyond the U.S. with robust social-safety nets, nationwide healthcare, and strong pharmaceutical regulations. These deaths cluster within a highly disadvantaged population segment identifiable within health- and social-service systems.

3 November 2023

The journal of human resources

How Does Visitation Affect Incarcerated Persons and Their Families?

1 November 2023

European Psychiatry

Changes in anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the European population

26 October 2023

Labour Economics

Access to language training and the local integration of refugees

15 October 2023

Children and Youth Services Review

Introducing a New Data Resource for Comparative Child Welfare Research: The Rockwool-Duke Global Child Welfare Database

9 September 2023

The Journal of Economic Inequality

Income developments in the great recession Status for the Danish Prime-age Working Population a Decade Following the Onset of the Financial Crisis.”

8 September 2023

Demographic Research

Partial Fertility Recuperation in Spain Two Years After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

5 September 2023

Canadian Review of Sociology

Sources of mathematics self-efficacy: The interactive role of parental education and perceptions of teachers

3 September 2023

Acta Sociologica

Criminal justice involvement, transition to fatherhood, and the demographic foundation of the intergenerational transmission of crime

30 August 2023

Justice Quarterly

Court Delays and Criminal Recidivism: Results from Danish Administrative Data and a Policy Reform

11 August 2023

European Journal of Public Health

The association between type of conception through medically assisted reproduction and childhood cognition: A Danish population-wide cohort study

22 July 2023

Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health

Psychosocial working conditions and sickness absence among younger employees in Denmark

11 July 2023

Journal of Labor Economics

Permanent Residency and Refugee Immigrants’ Skill Investment

20 June 2023

The Review of Economics and Statistics

Language Training and Refugees’ integration

We evaluate a Danish reform focused on improving language training for those granted refugee status on or after January 1, 1999. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design, we find a significant, permanent, positive effect on earnings. This effect emerged after completion of language classes and was accompanied by additional schooling and a higher probability of working in complex jobs, consistent with language training, rather than other minor aspects of the reform, producing the results.

13 June 2023

Sociological Methods & Research

Lagged Dependent Variable Predictors, Classical Measurement Error, and Path Dependency: The Conditions Under Which Various Estimators are Appropriate

7 June 2023

An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology

Changes in Conception Rates, Not in Pregnancy-Related Behavior, Likely Caused Decline in Pre-Term Births During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

4 June 2023

International Migration Review

Welfare Benefit Generosity and Refugee Integration

This study examines how welfare benefit generosity impacts refugees’ integration into their new country. The effects of welfare benefit generosity are identified from a policy reform that reduced welfare benefits, first for newly arrived refugees, and second for those who had been in the country for at least 10 months. The results suggest that refugees respond quickly to the benefit reduction, but men and women react on different margins. Male refugees enter employment faster when they experience a benefit reduction, whereas no effect on the labor market is found for female refugees. Even though some men succeed in finding a job, both men and women experience a drop in disposable income of 20 percent. This seems to adversely affect women as they seek more health care, are more often hospitalized, and are more often charged with property crimes. No such unintended effects are found for men.

1 June 2023

Journal of Public Economics

Intergenerational spillover effects of language training for refugees

3 April 2023

The Economic Journal

Neighbourhood Gangs, Crime Spillovers and Teenage Motherhood

29 March 2023

The British Journal of Sociology

What cultural hierarchy? Cultural tastes, status and inequality

12 March 2023

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

Not Next to You: Peer Rejection, Student Characteristics and the Moderating Effects of Classroom Composition

10 March 2023

Economics of Education Review

Trade-offs between work-first and language-first strategies for refugees

20 February 2023

Population and Development Review

The Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic for Fertility and Birth Outcomes: Evidence from Spanish Birth Registers

16 February 2023

Review of Income and Wealth

An Examination of Public Income Redistribution

14 February 2023

Canadian Review of Sociology

Employment success of social assistance recipients: A provincial analysis by industry

1 February 2023

BMC Public Health

Stress/depression across the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark

25 January 2023

Journal of Human Resources

Are Children’s Socio-Emotional Skills Shaped by Parental Health Shocks?

9 January 2023

Kriminologia

The Future of Nordic Criminal Policy Evaluation

29 November 2022

European Sociological Review

Do refugee children impair the academic performance of native children in the school? Informative Null Results from Danish Register Data

This scientific article has been awarded the “European Sociological Review Best Article of the Year 2023 Award”. Discussions concerning the social impact of accepting refugee immigrants arise each time large numbers of refugees apply for protection in rich countries. However, little evidence exists on how the integration of refugees into core welfare institutions affects native citizens who depend on and interact with these institutions. In this paper, we focus on whether receiving refugees in a school cohort affects the academic performance of natives, using administrative data from Denmark, which contain test scores on all children in public schools. We exploit variation in the timing of refugees’ entrance to schools to facilitate causal estimates. Our findings show that refugees tend to cluster in schools that had poorer performance even prior to the refugees’ arrival. When we take this selection pattern into account, the effect of receiving refugees on the academic performance trajectory of natives is both statistically insignificant and substantially unimportant.

23 November 2022

European Sociological Review

Do refugee children impair the academic performance of native children in the school?

23 November 2022

Nature Human Behaviour

Life expectancy changes since COVID-19

17 October 2022

Oxford Review of Economic Policy

Refugee migration and the labour market: lessons from 40 years of post-arrival policies in Denmark

Denmark has accepted refugees from a large variety of countries and for more than four decades. Denmark has also frequently changed policies and regulations concerning integration programmes, transfer payments, and conditions for permanent residency. Such policy variation in conjunction with excellent administrative data provides an ideal laboratory to evaluate the effects of different immigration and integration policies on the outcomes of refugee immigrants. In this article, we first describe the Danish experience with refugee immigration over the past four decades. We then review different post-arrival refugee policies and summarize studies that evaluate their effects on the labour market performance of refugees. Lastly, we discuss and contrast these findings in the context of international studies of similar policies and draw conclusions for policy.

1 September 2022

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology

The Importance of Living Arrangements for Criminal Persistence and Desistance

23 August 2022

Labour Economics

Lessons for American from Denmark about Inequality and Social Mobility

9 August 2022

Drug and Alcohol Review

Developing harm reduction policies: Evidence from Copenhagen’s drug consumption rooms

5 July 2022

Workplace Health & Safety

Taking Prior Sick Leave Patterns Into Account When Estimating Health Consequences of Violence on the Job

7 June 2022

Acta Sociologica

On the unimportance of local increases in diversity: radical right wing populist candidates and the share of visible minorities in neighbourhoods

13 November 2021

Journal of Quantitative Criminology

Restricting Arranged Marriage Opportunities for Danish Minority Youth

7 July 2021

Journal of affective disorders

Work-related violence and depressive disorder among 955,573 employees followed for 6.99 million person-years

1 June 2021

Journal of Marriage and Family

Does the Intergenerational Transmission of Crime Depend on Family Complexity?

18 May 2021

Journal of Experimental Criminology

Pushed Out of the Education System: Using a Natural Experiment to Evaluate Consequences for Boys

6 October 2020

Demographic Research

Estimating and Explaining Racial Ethnic Disparities in the Cumulative Prevalence of Parental Imprisonment in Denmark

26 August 2020

Sociological Science

Pretrial Detention and the Costs of System Overreach for Employment and Family Life

17 August 2020

Science

Mild brain injuries don’t predispose kids to criminal behavior, Danish study suggests

But scientists say in some settings concussions may still contribute to risk of later criminal justice involvement.

2 October 2024

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“The German car industry will no longer exist in 20 to 30 years”

Interview with Director of The ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin Christian Dustmann, introducing the research institute.

1 March 2023

Phys.org

Social mobility across generations may be substantially overstated, study shows

New research measuring resources passed from parents to children shows that current estimates of intergenerational mobility may be substantially overstated.

8 September 2022

VoxEu

Refugee migration and the labour market: Lessons from 40 years of post-arrival policies in Denmark

Many countries are considering reforms to their asylum procedures, particularly those policies that equip refugees for the labour market and manage their financial support. This column brings together evidence from four decades of Danish refugee policies and identifies two policies whose benefits have outweighed their costs: allowing refugees to choose where they settle, and labour market programmes that increase investment in language skills. Policies that emphasise early job-training, regulate access to welfare benefits, or use permanent-residency incentives, on the other hand, create long-run disadvantages for some migrants.

10 April 2022