A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Spatial Assimilation at a Halt? Intergenerational Persistence in Neighborhood Contexts among Immigrant Minorities in Norway

  2022. Are Skeie Hermansen, Pal Oskar Hundebo, Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund. The international migration review

  Article

  Spatial assimilation theory claims that immigrants' acculturation and socioeconomic progress will lead to converging neighborhood attainment relative to non-migrant natives. Recently, it has been argued that equalization of local services and life chances across neighborhoods in egalitarian welfare states may delay spatial assimilation by reducing immigrants' incentives to move out of low-income areas with many (co-ethnic) immigrant neighbors. In this article, we extend this argument to study whether neighborhood equalization also contributes to intergenerational persistence in neighborhood contexts among descendants of immigrants in Norway. Using administrative data, we find that immigrant descendants as adults often remain in neighborhood contexts that resemble their childhood neighborhoods, characterized by relative economic disadvantage and comparatively few ethnic majority residents. Intergenerational persistence in neighborhood contexts is strongest among descendants of immigrants from Pakistan, the Middle East, and Africa. The remaining immigrant-native gaps in spatial economic inequality largely reflect differences in individuals' education and earnings, family background, and childhood neighborhood context, but these factors matter less for ethnic neighborhood segregation. For both economic and ethnic dimensions of neighborhood attainment, childhood neighborhood context is the factor that matters most in accounting for immigrant-native gaps, whereas individual socioeconomic attainment is the least important. Overall, our findings point to a pattern of uneven assimilation among immigrant descendants, where spatial assimilation is slow despite rapid socioeconomic progress across immigrant generations in the egalitarian Norwegian welfare state.

  Read more about Spatial Assimilation at a Halt? Intergenerational Persistence in Neighborhood Contexts among Immigrant Minorities in Norway

• Trends in Women’s and Men’s College Majors across Four Decades in Norway

  2022. Are Skeie Hermansen, Andrew M. Penner. Socius 8, 1-2

  Article

  Women are now more likely to receive college degrees than men, yet important differences remain in the college majors of women and men. This visualization depicts women’s and men’s college majors across four decades in Norway. The authors document the movement of women into higher paying majors and show that men are increasingly majoring in fields that are gender integrated. However, women remain overrepresented in female-dominated majors, and men remain in overrepresented in majors that have historically been well paid. This visualization thus underscores the progress that has been made in achieving gender parity in education as well as the challenges that remain. 

  Read more about Trends in Women’s and Men’s College Majors across Four Decades in Norway

• Ups and downs in finance, ups without downs in inequality

  2022. Olivier Godechot (et al.). Socio-Economic Review

  Article

  The upswing in finance in recent decades has led to rising inequality, but do downswings in finance lead to a symmetric decline in inequality? We analyze the asymmetry of the effect of ups and downs in finance, and the effect of increased capital requirements and the bonus cap on national earnings inequality. We use administrative employer–employee-linked data from 1990 to 2019 for 12 countries and data from bank reports, from 2009 to 2017 in 13 European countries. We find a strong asymmetry in the effect of upswings and downswings in finance on earnings inequality, a weak, if any, mitigating effect of capital requirements on finance’s contribution to inequality, and a restructuring but no absolute effect of the bonus cap on financiers’ earnings. We suggest that while rising financiers’ wages increase inequality in upswings, they are resilient in downswings and thus downswings do not contribute to a symmetric decline in inequality. 

  Read more about Ups and downs in finance, ups without downs in inequality

Show all publications by Are Skeie Hermansen at Stockholm University