Stockholms universitet

Carina MoodProfessor

Om mig

Jag är professor vid SOFI och tillhör levnadsnivå(LNU-)gruppen. Jag forskar om integration, fattigdom, ojämlikhet, intergenerationell överföring av resurser, och barns och ungas levnadsvillkor och välfärd.

För närvarande leder jag tre projekt: 

Jag är affilierad till Institutet för Framtidsstudier och är även aktiv i det internationella CILS4EU-projektet.

För mer information om min forskning, se den engelska sidan (menyn till vänster).

 

Publikationer på svenska och bidrag till den svenska samhällsdebatten:

September 2023: Rapporten Karriärer och barriärer– en ESO-rapport om skolgång och etablering för unga med utländsk bakgrund har publicerats och kan laddas ned gratis här. Resultaten sammanfattades på DN Debatt

November 2022: Vi har lanserat en hemsida med fakta om ungas integration

Oktober 2022: Boken Integration bland unga: En mångkulturell generation växer upp har publicerats och kan laddas ner här. En artikel om våra resultat på DN Debatt finns här.

September 2022: Vi skriver om vad fattigdom är i Socialmedicinsk tidskrift.

Mars 2022: Vi skriver en text (Integrating young migrants) i en rapport till Nordiska ministerrådet om hur man bäst kan hjälpa barn och unga som flytt Ukraina.

Oktober 2021: Vi skriver om barnfattigdom på DN Debatt.

Mars 2019: Den nya fattigdomen, vårt häfte i RJ:s årsbox 2019, finns här.

Augusti 2018: Vi publicerade en debattartikel i SvD om ensamhetens utveckling i Sverige som kan läsas här. Denna är en kortad version, och ursprungsversionen kan läsas här.

 

Forskningsprojekt

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • Attitudes in motion: acculturation in views on family, sexuality and gender roles among immigrant-background youth in Sweden

    2023. Chaïm la Roi, Carina Mood. Journal of ethnic and migration studies 49 (15), 3796-3815

    Artikel

    Swedes uphold progressive attitudes regarding family, sexuality, and gender norms. At the same time, Sweden has had generous immigration policies for decades. This leads to challenges for children of immigrants, who must navigate between expectations from their family and the surrounding society. Therefore, this study asks whether children of immigrants’ attitudes relating to family, sexuality and gender roles adapt and approach those of their Swedish-background peers, using the Swedish branch of the CILS4EU survey (n = 5434). We account for dynamics in three ways: We compare attitudes of first- and second-generation immigrants; compare attitudes of youth to those of their parents; and study change in youth’s attitudes over time. In favour of acculturation, we find that second-generation immigrants have more liberal attitudes than first-generation immigrants, that immigrant-background youth are closer to majority peers in attitudes than their parents are to majority parents, and that gender norms of immigrant-background youth move closer to those of Swedish-background youth over time. For attitudes relating to family and sexuality, however, we find a divergence in attitudes over time, but not because immigrant-background youth become less liberal: Their views do become more liberal, but majority youth see an even stronger change in the same direction. 

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  • Is ‘immigrant optimism’ in educational choice a problem? Ethnic gaps in Swedish upper secondary school completion

    2023. Jörg Dollmann (et al.). European Sociological Review 39 (3), 384-399

    Artikel

    In many Western countries, researchers have documented ambitious educational choices among students of immigrant origin, for example, the tendency to choose academically more demanding routes than others at given levels of school achievement (e.g. grades, GPA). While this may indicate integration, some warn against an ‘immigrant optimism trap’, because choosing more demanding tracks at lower levels of GPA may increase risks of non-completion. Using longitudinal Swedish population data (n ≈ 90,000), we estimate an upper secondary ‘ethnic completion gap’ of 12 per cent to the detriment of students of immigrant background. We then address the ‘trap hypothesis’ via two analyses. The first shows that if students of immigration background would make similar educational choices as other students at the same GPA, the completion gap would shrink by 3.4 percentage points. The second analysis, based on simulations, suggests that restricting admission to academic programmes based on prior GPA, would lead to a massive relocation of low- and mid-GPA students to—usually less demanding—vocational programmes, but would only reduce the completion gap by 2.2 percentage points. These changes must be considered marginal in view of the substantial restrictions of choice that either of these measures would entail. We conclude that completion gaps are not primarily a result of unfounded immigrant optimism, and that optimistic choices are likely to be a net positive for integration by improving the chances of immigrant youth to reach tertiary-level qualifications and professional occupations.

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  • Integration bland unga -en mångkulturell generation växer upp

    2022. Jan O. Jonsson, Carina Mood, Georg Treuter.

    Bok

    Diskussionen om integration i Sverige behöver förnyas. Den är visserligenpassionerad och livlig men bygger till stor del på framhävandet av enstakafall, anekdotiska belägg och känslor. I diskussioner där starka känslor är in-blandade kan det vara svårt att ta till sig information som inte passar den åsiktman redan har – faktaresistensen drabbar oss alla. Men med en förhoppningom att politiker, samhällsdebattörer, studenter, forskare och människor i all-mänhet har både intresse och respekt för hur verkligheten faktiskt ser ut villvi med denna bok bidra till en kunskapsgrund som kan göra integrations-debatten mer konstruktiv.

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  • Vad är ’fattigdom’ och hur bör den mätas?

    2022. Jan O. Jonsson, Carina Mood. Socialmedicinsk Tidskrift (4), 438-448

    Artikel

    Alla har sett de återkommande rubrikerna om att fattigdomen, alternativt barnfattigdomen, ökar. Men fattigdomen har faktiskt inte ökat sedan mitten av 1990-talet i Sverige. Det som har ökat är istället förekomsten av teoretiskt tvivelaktiga och urvattnade mått på fattigdom. Vi redogör för de grundläg-gande teorierna bakom olika fattigdomsmått och argumenterar för använ-dandet av mått som är förankrade i vanliga människors uppfattning om fattig-dom. Ett sådant mått bör utgå från brister i ekonomiska och/eller materiella resurser och operationaliseras som materiell deprivation eller som ’absolut inkomstfattigdom’, där inkomsterna relateras till olika socialt bestämda nöd-vändigheter. Ett sådant mer renodlat fattigdomsmått bör komplettera, men inte förväxlas med andra väsentliga samhällsfenomen, till exempel ojämlik-het och levnadsnivå; skilja sig från dem operationellt, precis som de skiljer sig teoretiskt.

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  • It's All about the Parents: Inequality Transmission across Three Generations in Sweden

    2020. Per Engzell, Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson. Sociological Science 7, 242-267

    Artikel

    A recent literature studies the role of grandparents in status transmission. Results have been mixed, and theoretical contributions highlight biases that complicate the interpretation of these studies. We use newly harmonized income tax records on more than 700,000 Swedish lineages to establish four empirical facts. First, a model that includes both mothers and fathers and takes a multidimensional view of stratification reduces the residual three-generation association in our population to a trivial size. Second, data on fathers' cognitive ability show that even extensive controls for standard socioeconomic variables fail to remove omitted variable bias. Third, the common finding that grandparents compensate poor parental resources can be attributed to greater difficulty of observing parent status accurately at the lower end of the distribution. Fourth, the lower the data quality, and the less detailed the model, the greater is the size of the estimated grandparent coefficient. Future work on multigenerational mobility should pay less attention to the size and significance of this association, which depends heavily on arbitrary sample and specification characteristics, and go on to establish a set of more robust descriptive facts.

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  • More than Money: Social Class, Income, and the Intergenerational Persistence of Advantage

    2017. Carina Mood. Sociological Science 4, 263-287

    Artikel

    I provide a uniquely comprehensive empirical integration of the sociological and economic approaches to the intergenerational transmission of advantage. I analyze the independent and interactive associations that parental income and social class share with children's later earnings, using large-scale Swedish register data with matched parent-child records that allow exact and reliable measurement of occupations and incomes. I show that parental class matters at a given income and income matters within a given social class, and the net associations are substantial. Because measurement error is minimal, this result strongly suggests that income and class capture partly different underlying advantages and transmission mechanisms. If including only one of these measures, rather than both, we underestimate intergenerational persistence by around a quarter. The nonlinearity of the income-earnings association is found to be largely a compositional effect capturing the main effect of class.

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  • The Mental Health Advantage of Immigrant-Background Youth: The Role of Family Factors

    2017. Carina Mood, Jonsson Jan O., Sara Brolin Låftman. Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (2), 419-436

    Artikel

    Children of immigrant background, despite problems with acculturation, poverty, and discrimination, have better mental health than children of native parents. We asked whether this is a result of immigrant families' characteristics such as family structure and relations. Using a new comparative study on the integration of immigrant-background youth conducted in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (N= 18,716), particularly strong associations with mental health (internalizing and externalizing problems) were found for family structure, family cohesion, and parental warmth. Overall, half of the advantage in internalizing and externalizing problems among immigrant-background youth could be accounted for by our measures of family structure and family relations, with family cohesion being particularly important.

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  • The Role of Education for Intergenerational Income Mobility: A comparison of the United States, Great Britain, and Sweden

    2017. Paul Gregg (et al.). Social Forces 96 (1), 121-151

    Artikel

    Previous studies have found that intergenerational income persistence is relatively high in the United States and Britain, especially as compared to Nordic countries. We compare the association between family income and sons' earnings in the United States (National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979), Britain (British Cohort Study 1970), and Sweden (Population Register Data, 1965 cohort), and find that both income elasticities and rank-order correlations are highest in the United States, followed by Britain, with Sweden being clearly more equal. We ask whether differences in educational inequality and in return to qualifications can explain these cross-country differences. Surprisingly, we find that this is not the case, even though returns to education are higher in the United States. Instead, the low income mobility in the United States and Britain is almost entirely due to the part of the parent-son association that is not mediated by educational attainment. In the United States and especially Britain, parental income is far more important for earnings at a given level of education than in Sweden, a result that holds also when controlling for cognitive ability. This goes against widespread ideas of the United States as a country where the role of ascription is limited and meritocratic stratification prevails.

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  • How much scope for a mobility paradox? The relationship between social and income mobility in Sweden

    2016. Richard Breen, Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson. Sociological Science 3, 39-60

    Artikel

    It is often pointed out that conclusions about intergenerational (parent–child) mobility can differ depending on whether we base them on studies of class or income. We analyze empirically the degree of overlap in income and social mobility; we demonstrate mathematically the nature of their relationship; and we show, using simulations, how intergenerational income correlations relate to relative social mobility rates. Analyzing Swedish longitudinal register data on the incomes and occupations of over 300,000 parent–child pairs, we find that social mobility accounts for up to 49 percent of the observed intergenerational income correlations. This figure is somewhat greater for a fine-graded micro-class classification than a five-class schema and somewhat greater for women than men. There is a positive relationship between intergenerational social fluidity and income correlations, but it is relatively weak. Our empirical results, and our simulations verify that the overlap between income mobility and social mobility leaves ample room for the two indicators to move in different directions over time or show diverse patterns across countries. We explain the circumstances in which income and social mobility will change together or co-vary positively and the circumstances in which they will diverge.

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  • Immigrant Integration and Youth Mental Health in Four European Countries

    2016. Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson, Sara Brolin Låftman. European Sociological Review 32 (6), 716-729

    Artikel

    The mental health of children of immigrant background compared to their majority peers is an important indicator of integration. We analyse internalizing and externalizing problems in 14–15-year-olds from England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (n = 18,716), using new comparative data (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries). Studying more than 30 different origin countries, we find that despite potential problems with acculturation and social stress, children of immigrants—particularly from geographically and culturally distant countries—report systematically fewer internalizing and externalizing problems than the majority population, thus supporting the ‘immigrant health paradox’ found in some studies. However, surprisingly, we do not find that this minority advantage changes with time in the destination country. Externalizing problems are most prevalent in our English sample, and overall Swedish adolescents show the least mental health problems. A plausible account of our results is that there is a positive selection of immigrants on some persistent and intergenerationally transferable characteristic that invokes resilience in children.

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  • Money, Peers and Parents: Social and Economic Aspects of Inequality in Youth Wellbeing

    2016. Stephanie Plenty, Carina Mood. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 45 (7), 1294-1308

    Artikel

    Indicators of social and economic status are important health determinants. However, evidence for the influence of family socioeconomic status in adolescent wellbeing is inconsistent and during this period of development youth may begin to develop their own status positions. This study examined social and economic health inequalities by applying a multidimensional and youth-orientated approach. Using a recent (2010–2011) and representative sample of Swedish 14-year olds (n = 4456, 51 % females), the impact of family socioeconomic status, youth economic resources and peer status on internalizing symptoms and self-rated health were examined. Data was based on population register, sociometric and self-report information. Aspects of family socioeconomic status, youth’s own economy and peer status each showed independent associations, with poorer wellbeing observed with lower status. However, there were equally strong or even stronger effects of peer status and youth’s own economy than family socioeconomic status. Lower household income and occupational status were more predictive of poor self-rated health than of internalizing symptoms. The findings suggest that youth’s own economy and peer status are as important as family socioeconomic status for understanding inequalities in wellbeing. Thus, a focus on youth-orientated conceptualizations of social and economic disadvantage during adolescence is warranted.

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  • Poverty trends during two recessions and two recoveries: Lessons from Sweden 1991—2013

    2016. Jan O. Jonsson, Carina Mood, Erik Bihagen. IZA Journal of European Labor Studies 5

    Artikel

    We study cross-sectional and long-term poverty in Sweden over a period spanning two recessions, and discuss changes in the policy context. We find large increases in absolute poverty and deprivation during the 1990’s recession but much smaller increases in 2008-2010. While increases in non-employment contributed to increasing poverty in the 1990’s, the temporary poverty increase 2008-2010 was entirely due to growing poverty among non-employed. Relative poverty has increased with little variation across business cycles. Outflow from poverty and long-term poverty respond quickly to macro-economic recovery, but around one percent of the working-aged are quite resistant to such improvements.

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  • The Social Consequences of Poverty: An Empirical Test on Longitudinal Data

    2016. Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson. Social Indicators Research 127 (2), 633-652

    Artikel

    Poverty is commonly defined as a lack of economic resources that has negative social consequences, but surprisingly little is known about the importance of economic hardship for social outcomes. This article offers an empirical investigation into this issue. We apply panel data methods on longitudinal data from the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey 2000 and 2010 (n = 3089) to study whether poverty affects four social outcomes-close social relations (social support), other social relations (friends and relatives), political participation, and activity in organizations. We also compare these effects across five different poverty indicators. Our main conclusion is that poverty in general has negative effects on social life. It has more harmful effects for relations with friends and relatives than for social support; and more for political participation than organizational activity. The poverty indicator that shows the greatest impact is material deprivation (lack of cash margin), while the most prevalent poverty indicators-absolute income poverty, and especially relative income poverty-appear to have the least effect on social outcomes.

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  • Trends in Child Poverty in Sweden: Parental and Child Reports

    2016. Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson. Child Indicators Research 9 (3), 825-854

    Artikel

    We use several family-based indicators of household poverty as well as child-reported economic resources and problems to unravel child poverty trends in Sweden. Our results show that absolute (bread-line) household income poverty, as well as economic deprivation, increased with the recession 1991–96, then reduced and has remained largely unchanged since 2006. Relative income poverty has however increased since the mid-1990s. When we measure child poverty by young people’s own reports, we find few trends between 2000 and 2011. The material conditions appear to have improved and relative poverty has changed very little if at all, contrasting the development of household relative poverty. This contradictory pattern may be a consequence of poor parents distributing relatively more of the household income to their children in times of economic duress, but future studies should scrutinze potentially delayed negative consequences as poor children are lagging behind their non-poor peers. Our methodological conclusion is that although parental and child reports are partly substitutable, they are also complementary, and the simultaneous reporting of different measures is crucial to get a full understanding of trends in child poverty.

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  • Do poorer youth have fewer friends? The role of household and child economic resources in adolescent school-class friendships

    2015. Simon Hjalmarsson, Carina Mood. Children and youth services review 57, 201-211

    Artikel

    Poverty among children and adolescents attracts considerable research interest, and many are concerned with the potential consequences of poverty for children's well-being and development. Research is however lacking on the consequences of economic hardship for children's social relations. This article asks whether adolescents with a lack of economic resources have fewer school-class friends than others, something we would expect given the modern view of poverty as a lack of economic resources that has negative social consequences. We take a child-centred perspective in explicitly acknowledging the role of the child's own economic and material resources alongside the more traditional measurement of parental incomes, and we use sociometric (network) data to assess children's school-class friendships. We find that adolescents with the lowest family incomes and those who often miss out on activities due to a lack of economic resources receive on average fewer friendship nominations and are more likely to experience social isolation in the school class. Access to an own room is also of some importance for the number of friends. These results point towards the importance for adolescents' social relations of having the economic and material possibilities to participate in the social life and in activities undertaken by peers. The estimated effects of household income and of students' own economic situation are largely independent of each other, suggesting that the common practice of assessing child economic conditions through parental income gives an incomplete picture. We suggest that policies directly targeting children's activities and social participation may be a relatively direct and cost-effective way of reducing the impact of economic resources and greatly improve the everyday lives of many adolescents and promote their social inclusion. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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  • The not-very-rich and the very poor: Poverty persistence and poverty concentration in Sweden

    2015. Carina Mood. Journal of European Social Policy 25 (3), 316-330

    Artikel

    We question the common description of poverty in Western countries as largely brief and transient and show that the spell-based analyses from which this view stems diverts attention from the bulk of poverty, which is persistent rather than transient. Measures of poverty concentration are suggested. Using Swedish population data spanning 18years (1990-2007, N (persons*years)=102,754,809), we can avoid problems that plague poverty research using survey data and can give precise calculations of completed durations without relying on questionable assumptions. The majority of poverty years were experienced by people in long-term poverty: 69percent of all poverty years over the 18-year period fell on people with 5years or more in poverty. Half of all poverty years were borne by only 5percent of the population, meaning that poverty was highly concentrated. This speaks in favour of the social policy efficiency in targeting a small group of long-term poor.

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Visa alla publikationer av Carina Mood vid Stockholms universitet