We examine the potential causal effect of years of schooling on the use of public disability pensions by studying the extension of compulsory schooling introduced in Norway in the 1960s. Simple regressions of disability pension receipt on schooling suggest a very strong negative relationship...

We construct linked register data on five Norwegian birth cohorts, covering: criminal charges after age 15; family characteristics and history up to age 15; and (for males) IQ test scores. A longitudinal analysis of the risk of initiation into crime in early adulthood suggests an increased risk for...

Although several established theories of crime often suggest an association between socio-economic background and youth criminal involvement, the empirical evidence for such claims diverges considerably. The aim of this paper is to re-investigate the relationship between family income and...

A link between lack of employment and poverty is often made implicitly, but can be difficult to enumerate in a satisfactory manner. We would therefore like to ask the question: to what extent does acquiring employment increase a poor household’s probability of exiting poverty? Register data...

Studies on the earnings assimilation of immigrants have traditionally focused exclusively on immigrants in employment. However, given evidence of immigrants' difficulties in entering and remaining in the labor market, restricting the population to those in employment may entail a selection bias....

Out of necessity, the earliest studies of immigrants' performance in the labor market in Western countries focused solely on men. However, as the employment rates of women in Western countries rise and approach those of men, questions about the labor market adjustments of immigrant women also...

In light of the riots and unrest among immigrants in France during the fall of 2005, the question of how immigrants are faring with respect to a certain minimum in society is both a timely and pertinent question for a number of European countries. In Norway, the prevalence of poverty is...

We analyse how inequality of disposable income evolved in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. We find that a standard measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - was surprisingly stable in all...

This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during the 1980's. The results demonstrate that inequality is greater in the United States than in the Scandinavian countries and that the ranking of countries with respect to inequality...