Invandrare och bidrag i Sverige, Nederländerna och Storbritannien

På senare tid har IZA gett ut tre working papers om invandrare och bidrag.

Disparities in Social Assistance Receipt between Immigrants and Natives in Sweden (Björn Gustafsson, november 2011) är en kunskapsöversikt om vad forskningen visar om invandrare och socialbidrag. Det är dystra slutsatser.

Most out-payment for social assistance in Sweden refers to foreign born persons although the category makes up 14 percent of the population. While some part of the high costs can be attributed to needs to maintaining recent refugees, this is not the entire story. Immigrants tend to assimilate out of social assistance receipt. However, receipt continues to be higher than among in several characteristics identical natives many years after immigration among immigrants from not rich countries. The elevated probabilities of social assistance receipt among immigrants from not rich countries are mainly due to failures of integrating into the labor market at the destination.

Immigrant Participation in Welfare Benefits in the Netherlands (Aslan Zorlu, november 2011) undersöker inte bara socialbidragen utan hela bidragssystemet. Men bilden känns igen från i Sverige. Utrikes födda är överrepresenterade i bidragssystemen, även jämfört med inrikes födda i liknande situation. Författaren lyfter särskilt fram den bekymmersamma situationen för barn till icke-västliga invandrare.

The analysis shows that migrants are drastically more likely to have a benefit, in particular social assistance and disability benefits. A large part of migrants’ dependence can be explained by their background characteristics and immigration history but still a significant unexplained residual is left. Most notably, the probability of welfare use of non-western second generation is about twice as high as the probability of western immigrants, which is a true challenge for policy makers.

Welfare Participation by Immigrants in the UK (Stephen Drinkwater och Catherine Robinson, november 2011) konstaterar att välfärdsutnyttjandet skiljer sig mycket åt mellan olika invandrargrupper och för olika typer av bidrag. Skillnader finns också mellan män och kvinnor inom grupperna.

Possibly the main conclusion of the paper is that for the UK at least, it is very difficult to generalise on the issue of welfare participation by immigrants. This is because social welfare claims vary considerably by immigrant group as well as by the types of benefits that are claimed. Australasian and EUA8 migrants are the least likely to claim welfare benefits but this is to some extent explained by the characteristics of individuals from these groups, especially for those from accession countries.

In contrast, much higher rates of welfare benefit claims are made by other groups, especially migrants from Asia and other parts of Europe.