Search

Many European high-income countries face a rapid increase in the number of immigrants from low- and middle-income countries reaching the normal pension age. Thus, it is increasingly relevant to ask: how are older migrants from such countries faring? Here we study poverty rates and determinants of poverty among natives and persons born in Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Turkey living in Denmark or Sweden in 2010. Income data on all such persons aged 65–82 living in the two destination countries are analysed. In both Denmark and Sweden, we report much higher poverty rates among the immigrants studied than among natives. Estimated probability models show that being poor is related to a person's education, family status and age, as well as year of arrival in the destination country and the labour market and his or her residential status at the age of 55. However, the labour market in the destination country at the time of arrival also matter. Persons born in Yugoslavia or Turkey who had immigrated to Denmark during the '70s and '80s were more likely to be in poverty in 2010 that their counterparts with the same characteristics who had immigrated to Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study determinants of relative poverty among immigrants and natives in Denmark and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s. Denmark and Sweden share the same properties in a range of labour-market and welfare-state characteristics. At the same time, they differ very much in cyclical profiles and immigration experiences during recent decades. Both countries have followed the same principles regarding immigration policy, i.e. immigration from low-income countries has been restricted to tied movers and refugees. We use 60 percent of the median in the distribution of equivalent disposable income as the poverty line. Data comes from two large panels based on administrative data. We find that immigrants have higher poverty rates than natives in both countries and that this difference has clearly increased in both countries. The paper reports results based on running probability models of poverty incidence. Explanatory variables include years since immigration, demographic characteristics and country of origin. We conclude that a significant part of the difference in aggregate immigrant poverty rates reflects differences in composition by country of origin and differences in the structure of benefits to families with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "the achievement society" is a framework that has often been used for explaining and addressing an increase in psychological distress among Nordic teenagers, particularly in girls. This article provides an historical account of how "the achievement society" became influential in countries like Norway and Denmark, even giving birth to a generational label ("Generation Achievement"). We show how this framework can help us comprehend why adolescents often struggle to become the right kind of subject in order to live up to the idealised norms, and examine the possibility that this perspective also might lead to overly individualistic framings of youths' mental health, and correspondingly alluring societal demands for resilience training as a necessary prevention. Finally, we discuss the class implications of this framework. To the extent that achievement is associated with ambitious upper-middle class children, it is vital to show extra awareness of the people who fall outside this description, so that intervention based on this analytical framework does not inadvertently further enhance social inequality under neoliberal rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nordic countries have gained a global reputation for their robust welfare states. They are praised as being the best countries in the world for families—but what kind ? Using Iceland and Denmark as comparative case studies in welfare feminism, this article explores how lone mothers engage with Nordic family leave policies and labor markets. Based on in-depth interviews with Icelandic and Danish lone mothers, it demonstrates that work–family integration policies are more effective in social–democratic Denmark, but that Iceland's more liberal welfare regime may provide greater benefits to women in the labor market. Ultimately, lone mothers in both countries still face difficulties in reconciling work and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]