Socialbidragstagares flytt mellan storstad och avfolkningsbygd

Social dumpning eller problemanhoppning i förorten?

Abstract

Migration of social beneficiaries between ton and country: Social dumping or accumulation of problems in the suburbs?

The patterns of internal migration in Sweden among people on social benefits have been much debated in newspapers and in other general debates around the year 2020, but the knowledge base in this field is limited. Based on register data, this study concludes that people supported by social benefits are more prone to move, although their deviation from the general pattern is decreasing; that the net redistribution brings social beneficiaries from municipalities with decreasing populations to the big cities rather than the other way around, and certainly so among people of foreign background; that long-term social beneficiaries who move in the other direction have an increased likelihood to move on; and that the net pattern remains also when the effects of other attributes on migration are controlled for in a regression model. Thus, the migration patterns among long-term social beneficiaries hint mainly at a “social import” to the big cities from municipalities with decreasing populations, rather than the opposite.