Family and Socioeconomic Drivers of Poverty Disparities Between Second-Generation Immigrants and the Children of Natives in Sweden

Siddartha Aradhya , Stockholm University
Raffaele Grotti, University of Trento
Rense Nieuwenhuis, Stockholm University
Anna Tegunimataka, Lund University
Max Thaning, Stockholm University

This paper delves into childhood poverty of second-generation (G2) children in Sweden, comparing them with their peers from the majority population. Sweden is a particular interesting case to study childhood poverty because the poverty rate in Sweden is almost twice as high as in Finland and Denmark, notwithstanding Sweden shares a relatively generous welfare system with the two neighbour countries. Specifically, we examine poverty differentials across 15 G2 origin groups and the native population, and assess the roles of family structure and parental socioeconomic conditions in accounting for G2-native disparities. We leverage full-population register data from 2012-2020 for children aged 0-18 and apply Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder (KOB) decomposition. Findings reveal stark inequalities in childhood poverty. On the one extreme, majority children present the lowest poverty rates at about 8 percent; on the other extreme, children with Somali origin present the highest rate at about 80 percent. Preliminary results suggest that origin groups composition play a role in accounting for such disparities. For example, Somali-origin children is the group characterized by the largest family size (namely, with the highest number of children in the family) and by the lowest parental educational level, both aspects strongly related to poverty. However, poverty disparities are not only a story of groups’ composition but also of different degrees of vulnerability across groups to family and socio-economic characteristics.

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 Presented in Session 63. Immigrants' Descendants and Social Stratification