The Scandinavian Journal of Economics

Stepping stone or exit path: experimental evidence on training the long-term unemployed

Abstract: This study estimates the effects of an employment programme for disadvantaged unemployed individuals. The programme emphasized on-the-job training and contracting the unemployed for a few paid weekly work hours as a stepping stone into the labour market. Evaluated through a randomized controlled trial with 3,727 participants, the programme was found to accelerate transitions into part-time work. Contrary to its intention, it permanently increased the share of participants receiving disability pensions among most disadvantaged groups. To explain this finding, we suggest that training, while enhancing productivity for some, simultaneously provided information of employability used in the assessment of disability pension eligibility.

10. august 2026

Economics of Education Review

The demand for private schools and its impact on school segregation and student outcomes

Abstract This study examines the impact of private school attendance on segregation and student achievement in compulsory school in Denmark. We show that increased private school attendance is driven by students from high socio-economic groups. Leveraging variation across municipalities, grade and calendar years and instrumental variables based on private school openings, we find that higher private school enrollment is associated with higher segregation of disadvantaged children. From event study models of the private school openings and a mover design that controls for student parental background, peer parental background, past achievement and non-cognitive scores, we find small achievement effects of private school attendance.    

29. juni 2026

Labour Economics

The Returns to Host-country College for Immigrants

Abstract This study estimates the causal effect of access to college for adult immigrants. I utilize that immigrants must demonstrate their language proficiency to enroll in college and estimate the effect of college access by comparing those who just passed to those who just failed the test. Passing the test raises the proportion of immigrants who graduate from college at the expense of shorter educations. This change in skill investments increases earnings by 19% while not affecting average employment or work hours and is in part driven by job shifts towards high-skilled jobs. For the immigrants on the margin of passing the language test, the earnings effects outweigh the incremental costs of education.

29. juni 2026

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Divine Policy: The Impact of Religion in Government

Abstract Can policies shape personal values and beliefs? To examine, we exploit the staggered introduction of faith-based initiatives across US states. Our difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the initiatives strengthened religiosity and conservative-religious social views, such as attitudes against homosexuals. The evidence points to causal effects; we find no systematic differences prior to implementation, the results are robust to restricting comparison to contiguous counties and to conducting triple-differences estimation exploiting treatment heterogeneity. A key explanation, in line with standard models of religion and supported by data on nonprofit organizations, is that the initiatives facilitated the establishment of faith-based organizations.

1. januar 2026

The Review of Economics and Statistics

The Causal Effect of Scaling up Access to Psychotherapy

Abstract This paper estimates the causal effect of scaling up access to psychotherapy. I study a 2008 reform of the Danish public health insurance, which introduced 60% coverage for psychotherapy by private practice psychologists for patients aged 18–37 diagnosed with depression or anxiety. Using administrative data from 1995–2019 and quasi-experimental methods, I show that psychotherapy coverage reduces psychiatric hospital contacts, physical health care use, and suicide attempts, but has no effect on labor market outcomes, including employment or disability pension. Still, savings from reduced use of other health care services exceed policy costs, making it both cost-reducing and welfare-improving.

18. december 2025

Nature Communications

Parental socioeconomic composition of birth cohorts changed during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic offers opportunities to study effects of in-utero and early life exposure to environmental changes. However, inferences from such studies may be flawed if the pandemic has changed the socioeconomic composition of parents. Analysing over 77.9 million live births from 15 countries, we estimate changes in the socioeconomic composition of the cohort born between December 2020 and December 2021 using interrupted time series analysis. We find that, compared with their counterfactual compositions, the December 2020-December 2021 birth cohort has a higher proportion of babies born to socioeconomically advantaged parents in Austria, England, Finland, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, Wales, and the United States while we observe the opposite change for Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. These changes in cohort composition may cause between-cohort differences in life course outcomes that are influenced by parental socioeconomic circumstances even if early life exposure to the pandemic had no direct effect on this birth cohort.

13. december 2025

Journal of Adolescence

Within-Individual Variability in Well-Being Among Emerging Adults

Abstract The growing rates of youth who report poor well-being is a cause of great public concern. But we still do not have a good grasp of the degree of volatility of poor well-being among emerging adults. The current study examines within-individual variability in well-being.

1. oktober 2025

European Sociological Review - Oxford academic

Union dissolution and children’s educational achievement: separating effects of school and non-school environments

Abstract We study whether the educational disadvantage of children from households where parents have dissolved their union is due to selection or deteriorating non-school environments and whether exposure to school environments compensates or exacerbates such disadvantage. We apply a differential exposure approach (DEA) to Danish population data collecting public-school reading comprehension tests. The approach exploits variation in children’s birth dates and test administration dates to decompose children’s learning as the product of joint exposure to school and non-school environments. We find that children experiencing parental separation have 5–7 per cent lower test scores, with lower learning returns to non-school environments, and diminishing learning outcomes proportional to time spent in separated households. Critically, school appears to neither mitigate nor exacerbate these achievement gaps, suggesting that degrading of non-school environment post-separation primarily impacts children’s learning.

26. august 2025

Journal of Applied Econometrics

The Different Sources of Intergenerational Income Mobility in High- and Low-Income Families

Abstract This paper studies intergenerational income mobility using register data for 630,000 Danish children and their parents. We document substantial mobility differences across parents’ income levels. Decomposing the mobility estimates shows that for children from low-income families, intergenerational income persistence is exclusively explained by parents’ influence on children’s employment. As parents’ income increases, education becomes an increasingly dominant factor, except among children from the top 5% where intergenerational income persistence is driven by capital income likely through bequests and business contacts. Finally, we find that progressive public transfers such as those in Denmark suppress the importance of intergenerational transmission of employment. (99)

26. august 2025

Industrial Relations

Employment strategies in response to the first Covid lockdown: A typology of French workplaces

Abstract This research connects the literature on crisis management and on firm flexibility to investigate human resource (HR) strategies in response to unexpected crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Leveraging data from French workplaces we identify five main types of strategies implemented during the first lockdown, which go beyond the massive use of teleworking or the use of short-time work. The analysis demonstrates that a combination of preexisting HR practices (teleworking agreements, wage levels, risk exposure, and health and safety committees) and public policies (short-time programs, legislation on short-time contracts, and temps) influences which of these five strategies firms adopt.

15. marts 2025

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

The Lancet Public Health

Association between childhood adversity and use of the health, social, and justice systems in Denmark (DANLIFE): a nationwide cohort study

Abstract Childhood adversities can negatively affect health and social outcomes. We aimed to assess the association between adversity in childhood and use of public services in early adulthood across three systems: health, social welfare, and justice.

20. 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