Demography

Two Decades of Child Welfare System Contact in the Global North: A Research Note on Trends in 44 Countries

Abstract Child maltreatment and child welfare system contact are both associated with an elevated risk of adverse outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Yet, data on variation in system contact are available for only a handful of countries, limiting knowledge about the societal correlates of system contact. As reported in this research note, we identified, collected, and harmonized administrative data on child welfare agency investigations, confirmed maltreatment, and placements into out-of-home care for 44 countries in the Global North. We analyzed 15 sociodemographic factors commonly associated with child maltreatment and child welfare system contact. Results support three core conclusions. First, data are much more available on late-stage system contact (e.g., foster care caseloads) than for early-stage system contact (e.g., investigations). Second, whereas early-stage contact tended to be on the rise in most countries, late-stage contact was stable or declining. Cross-national variation in these trends was generally less substantial than cross-national variation in levels of child welfare system contact, indicating relatively stable cross-national differences. Third, cross-national variation in out-of-home care largely reflected, but was not reducible to, regional and sociocultural variation: we find little evidence for universal drivers of foster care caseloads across the Global North.

1. februar 2025

Demography

The Demographic and Socioeconomic Consequences of Restricting Access to Marriage for Young Immigrants in Denmark

Abstract In July 2002, Danish reforms limited the marriage opportunities for all Danish and non–European Union (EU) citizens younger than 24 living in Denmark who wished (or whose parents wished for them) to marry someone from outside the EU. Before the reform, more than 80% of first- and second-generation immigrants from outside the EU married spouses from their parents’ origin countries; the reform drastically changed their marriage market. We examine the policy’s effects on subsequent marriage behavior, the transition to motherhood, human capital accumulation, and labor market activities using full-population administrative data on 578,380 Danish-born first- and second-generation non-EU immigrants born in 1972–1990 and a difference-in-differences design. We find that the policy delayed marriages among individuals with an immigrant background, extended premarital cohabitation, changed the composition of spouses, and delayed and decreased in-wedlock fertility. Finally, the duration of obtained formal education increased. Our results emphasize that reforms constraining access to external marriage markets can have lasting impacts on marriage demographics among immigrants.

1. februar 2025

Social Forces

Parental Union Dissolution and Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Addressing Selection and Considering the Role of Post-Dissolution Living Arrangements

Abstract Increasingly children whose parents no longer live together are living in two households, alternating between family contexts. A growing literature documents strong, descriptive heterogeneities in children’s wellbeing across living arrangements. We combine longitudinal survey and administrative population data on 6000 Danish children born in 1995 to study how children’s emotional and behavioral problems change following parental union dissolution. Extending the existing, predominantly descriptive literature, we use several panel regression strategies that aim to control for unobservable confounding together with repeated measurement of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire to study children’s problems increase after parental union dissolution and examine heterogeneity across post-dissolution living arrangements. We find a substantial increase in emotional and behavioral problems following union dissolution, but only little evidence for substantial heterogeneity existing across post-dissolution family constellations and living arrangements. Our findings indicate that not only there is casual effect of parental union dissolution on children’s long-term wellbeing, but also that existing descriptive findings on differences across living arrangements likely are due to selection.

25. januar 2025

Økonomi & Politik

Befolkningsaldring og sundhedsudgifter i Danmark

I løbet af de sidste 50 år har sundhedsudgifter udgjort en stigende andel af det globale forbrug, samtidig med at levetiden har været støt stigende, hvilket har vakt bekymring blandt økonomer, politikere og beslutningstagere. Denne artikel undersøger forskningen i aldersrelaterede sundhedsudgifter og de faktorer, der påvirker denne udvikling. Da sundhedsudgifter primært er koncentreret i de sidste leveår, fører befolkningsaldring ikke nødvendigvis til en betydelig stigning i udgifterne. Undtagelsen er dog plejeudgifter, som stiger med alderen. Derudover viser litteraturen, at medicinsk teknologi og praksis, som især gavner ældre, også presser omkostningerne op. Trods bekymringer om stigende sundhedsudgifter i en aldrende befolkning er situationen i Danmark mindre alarmerende. Effektiv forvaltning af det danske sygesikringssystem og Finansministeriets årvågenhed har, bortset fra en midlertidig stigning under covid-19-pandemien, holdt sundhedsudgifterne stabile som en andel af bruttonationalproduktet.

14. november 2024

Nature Human Behaviour

Intergenerational persistence of poverty in five high-income countries

Childhood poverty increases the likelihood of adult poverty. However, past research offers conflicting accounts of cross-national variation in the strength of—and mechanisms underpinning—the intergenerational persistence of poverty. Here the authors investigate differences in intergenerational poverty in the United States, Australia, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom using administrative- and survey-based panel datasets.

28. oktober 2024

The Scandinavian Journal of Economics

The making and unmaking of opportunity: educational mobility in 20th-century Denmark

We examine trends in intergenerational educational mobility throughout the 20th century in Denmark. We demonstrate that major reforms in compulsory schooling substantially increased not only the levels of education but also intergenerational mobility in education for children born in the 1940s through to the 1960s. However, even as college education has expanded significantly for children born in the 1970s and 1980s, educational mobility has been declining. We empirically test different mechanisms that could account for this decline in educational mobility.

17. maj 2024

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. maj 2024

American Economic Journal

Unintended Consequences of Welfare Cuts for 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. maj 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. februar 2024

Social Science & Medicine

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

Previous research identifies stark socioeconomic disparities in child injuries, yet research on the repercussions hereof on other aspects of children’s lives remains sparse. This paper tests whether social gradients in minor traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs or concussions) contribute to corresponding inequalities in children’s academic performance. Previous research on this topic is mostly based on small samples and confounded by non-random selection into experiencing mTBIs. We improve on prior research by using high quality, large N, administrative registry data. Further, we control for selection into having an mTBI via comparing the test score progression of children having an mTBI with children who experience an mTBI in later years (staggered difference-indifferences). Based on Danish ER/hospital records and national test score data, we find that children from families with lower earnings and less education are more likely to experience an mTBI and that having an mTBI negatively correlates with reading test scores. However, comparing present with future mTBI cases, we show that having an mTBI within a year before a test does not negatively affect children’s reading scores. Our findings suggest that negative correlations between mTBIs and academic performance more likely reflect socioeconomic gradients in mTBI incidents rather than a direct causal effect. Further, socioeconomic gradients in mTBI incidents do not significantly contribute to corresponding disparities in academic performance.

15. januar 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. oktober 2023

Labour Economics

Access to language training and the local integration of refugees

15. oktober 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. juli 2023

Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health

Psychosocial working conditions and sickness absence among younger employees in Denmark

11. juli 2023

Journal of Labor Economics

Permanent Residency and Refugee Immigrants’ Skill Investment

20. juni 2023

Fokus

Læring af 40 års integrationspolitik: Danskuddannelse til flygtninge er en god investering

15. juni 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. juni 2023

Sociological Methods & Research

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

7. juni 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. juni 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. juni 2023

Samfundsøkonomen

Social arv og offentlige udgifter til uddannelse

12. april 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. marts 2023

The British Journal of Sociology

What cultural hierarchy? Cultural tastes, status and inequality

12. marts 2023

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

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

10. marts 2023

Samfundsøkonomen

Hvad er konsekvenserne af reduceret uddannelsesstøtte og omlægning til lån?

Skrevet af Jacob Nielsen Arendt. Denne artikel gennemgår evidens for konsekvenser af en reduktion af statens uddannelsesstøtte (SU) samt omlægning af SU til lån. SU-ordningen har to primære formål: At få flere i uddannelse og at øge den sociale mobilitet. Jeg gennemgår to danske effektstudier, der begge understøtter, at SU-ordningen opfylder de to formål. Begge studier er dog foretaget på data af ældre dato, og der er begrænset viden om, hvordan en eventuel erstatning af stipendier med lån kan afbøde effekterne af en reduktion af stipendier. På baggrund af eksisterende viden vurderes det, at der vil være risiko for, at en reduktion af SU-ordningen reducerer andelen af unge med en uddannelse og mindsker den sociale mobilitet, og at omlægning til lån ikke kan afbøde disse effekter. Effekterne fra de danske studier illustreres i et simpelt eksempel. Afslutningsvis fremhæves, at der er behov for diskussion af, hvordan og om en besparelse fra reduktioner af SU kan anvendes bedre.

1. marts 2023

Samfundsøkonomen

Falder æblet langt fra stammen? Status på den intergenerationelle transmission i kriminalitet

Skrevet af Anne Sofie Tegner Anker. Som det er tilfældet på en lang række områder, har familiebaggrund også en central betydning for risikoen for at begå kriminalitet. Særligt sammenhængen mellem forældres kriminalitet og børnenes kriminalitetsrisiko – altså den intergenerationelle transmission i kriminalitet – har optaget kriminologien, og flere studier dokumenterer, at børn, hvis forældre har begået kriminalitet, har betydeligt større risiko for selv at begå kriminalitet end børn med mere lovlydige forældre. Denne artikel opsummerer den kvantitative forskning indenfor den intergenerationelle transmission i kriminalitet, opridser de gængse forklaringsmodeller bag transmissionen og dykker ned i to udvalgte tematikker, nemlig betydningen af familieformer samt betydningen af straf.

1. marts 2023

Economics of Education Review

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

20. februar 2023

Population and Development Review

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

16. februar 2023

Review of Income and Wealth

An Examination of Public Income Redistribution

14. februar 2023

Canadian Review of Sociology

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

1. februar 2023

BMC Public Health

Stress/depression across the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark

25. januar 2023

Journal of Human Resources

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

9. januar 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

Denne videnskabelige artikel er blevet er tildelt prisen “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. oktober 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. juli 2022

Workplace Health & Safety

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

7. juni 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. juli 2021

Journal of affective disorders

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

1. juni 2021

Journal of Marriage and Family

Does the Intergenerational Transmission of Crime Depend on Family Complexity?

18. maj 2021

Journal of Experimental Criminology

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

6. oktober 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