Maria Brandén

This study investigates if neighbourhoods can alter the strong relationship between parental background and children’s adult outcomes. In particular, we examine if neighbourhood effects are heterogeneous in such a way that they are particularly important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and if school quality has a mediating effect in this equation. Using register data and individualized neighbourhoods, we follow five full birth cohorts of individuals born from 1983 to 1987. We examine the interaction between social background and neighbourhoods in shaping (i) the risk of children relying on social welfare when they are aged 30, and (ii) the probability of belonging to the highest income decile at age 30–34. Growing up in a resource-rich neighbourhood is associated with better life outcomes. Contrary to what several neighbourhood theories predict, we find that neighbourhood effects operate similarly regardless of social background. Differences in peer composition of schools does not explain these local neighbourhood effects, whereas own school results attenuate neighbourhood effects substantially. Our findings are in contrast to results from the United States studies but are in line with historical Swedish studies; and contribute to further disentangling the various mechanisms through which the neighbourhood operates.

Educational gradients in parental leave length are opposite for women and men: highly educated women return to work faster than those with low education while highly educated men are absent longer than less educated men. Explanations for the opposite gradients are typically made at the individual- or couple-level. To date, no quantitative study has documented whether the opposite educational gradients hold also within workplaces. In this study, we use employer–employee matched Swedish register data with fixed-effects models to examine whether the educational gradient applies also among co-workers in the same workplace. The results show that three-quarters of the educational effect typically attributed to the individual father disappeared when comparing fathers within workplaces. The educational gradient of mothers remained largely unchanged. These findings provide the first population-level evidence for the primacy of the workplace in determining fathers’ care choices.