That is a lot of hours…

According to some new stats from Statistics Denmark, Danes spend on average 3 hours and 18 minutes watching TV every day. I got curious and so decided to take a closer look at the numbers. The numbers below are based on ‘FOR4215: Gennemsnitlig dagligt tv-forbrug i minutter (3 år+) efter måned’ from Statistikbanken.

It’s a quite interesting jump. What about variation during the year? Well, we watch more TV during the winter months, but actually I’d have guessed beforehand that the variation was bigger than it seems to be:

Danes watch more hours of TV2 than they watch hours of DR1, on an annual basis (FOR4213: Seertid (i minutter) efter tv-kanal og programtype). In 2011, they watched 16.806 minutes of TV2 on average (~46 minutes/day) and 12.945 minutes of DR1 (~35). I would have thought these numbers were higher, because they still leave a lot of hours unaccounted for.

This is one of those areas where I don’t mind being below average.

Data on Danish immigrants, 2011 (3)

The third post in the series, here are the first two posts. This part will deal with education and I must admit that it’s less data-heavy than the previous two posts, in part because I felt it was necessary to spend some time explaining how the Danish education system actually works here (and in part because I feel there’s a limit as to how much time I can justify spending on posts like these). I’ll do another post on crime later on, so this is not the last post in the series. Anyway, here goes:

*In 2010, 44% of male descendants of non-Western immigrants and 61% of female descendants of non-Western immigrants in Denmark at the age of 30 had finished an education leading to a vocational/professional qualification (see below for some notes on terminology). The corresponding numbers for people of Danish origin at the age of 30 were 73% and 79%. The education level of non-Western female descendants has increased over time; in 2004 the number was 44%. (p.65)

*It was a bit harder to translate stuff from this section than the rest because the Danish education system is a bit different from that of e.g. the US, creating a few problems related to terminology. The terminology I’ve used in this section when I was in doubt follows this source. So, which educations are in fact included in the ‘education leading to a …’ (abbreviated ELVQs in the following) measure above and which are not? ELVQs include (Danish link) various technical educations (electrician, carpenter,…), further education leading to a degree (BA, MA, PhD) as well as various other educations (office education, teaching, nursing,…). A high school degree is not included in the set, nor is a grundskoleuddannelse (see below), and if you’re a college drop-out who have not obtained a degree you’re also not included in the set of people with an ELVQ. The idea is of course that if you have an ELVQ, you have finished an education that has given you some specific skills that are useful in terms of finding and retaining employment. I decided this would also be as good a place as any to add a bit more background info about the Danish education system you might need to make sense of the numbers in the report – it’s not in there, so no page references. In Denmark the lowest attainable ‘formal education level’ (i.e. disregarding drop-outs before that point) you can have is completion of the 9th grade (grundskoleuddannelse). The graduation exam is called ‘Folkeskolens afgangsprøve’. Technically it’s a little complicated as to where exactly to put high school in terms of grades, because some people finish 9th grade and then go to high school directly (I did) whereas others take 10th grade first at the same place they took 1st-9th grade before they go to high school. The coursework in Danish high schools is the same for people who went to 10th grade before going to HS and for people who didn’t, and HS classes are a mix of both types of students. I’m not completely sure if you’re required to take 10th grade before you can enroll in a vocational(/technical) education like carpentry, but I think some of them do demand that you have 10th grade before you can start, or at least that you have taken some of the specific courses (Danish, maths). Adult immigrants without an education can take a ‘basic adult education’ which is supposed to confer the same skills as a traditional grundskoleuddannelse (in a shorter amount of time) – after they have that they can move on to a vocational education or secondary education.

*A Danish ELVQ perhaps needless to say significantly increases employment opportunities. For 30-39 year old male non-Western immigrants who had only a grundskoleuddannelse/basic adult education, the employment rate was 58% in 2010 (females: 45%, p.79). For those with a vocational education, the employment rate was 76% (females: 78%). For those with a medium-cycle higher education (‘mellemlang videregående uddannelse’), the employment rate was 82% (females: 84%). For those with a long cycle higher education (MA or equivalent/higher), the employment rate was 79% (females: 77%). (p.65 unless otherwise specified)

*When you look at the descendants of non-Western immigrants at the age of 30 years, 41% of males and 25% of females have only a grundskoleuddannelse. The corresponding numbers for males and females of Danish origin are 18% and 13%. 22% of male- and 30% of female descendants of non-Western immigrants have a vocational education at the age of 30; the corresponding numbers for people of Danish origin are 40% and 30%. When it comes to medium-cycle higher education, the numbers for non-Western descendants are 6% and 15%; the corresponding numbers of people of Danish origin are 10% and 24%. 10% of male descendants and 8% of female descendants of non-Western immigrants at the age of 30 have a long cycle higher education; 13% of males of Danish origin and 15% of females of Danish origin at that age have one. As mentioned above there’s generally a pronounced gender difference when it comes to the education of non-Western descendants, as 61% of female descendants and 44% of male descendants at the age of 30 have a ELVQ. (p.67)

*I’ll add a couple of cautious remarks here regarding how to interpret the numbers above, cautious remarks which are not included in the report (so no page references): a) There’s probably a significant power issue here when considering forecasting based on these numbers, because the number of non-Western descendants in this age group (30-years-old) is quite low – n=558 (males) and n=559 (females). b) In terms of forecasting, heterogeneity might also be an issue. It matters if you’re looking at descendants born before or after 1983-84, because the composition of new immigrants changed at that point (in the medium run, so did the composition of immigrants in Denmark as a whole). I already talked a bit about related matters in the comment section here. Non-Westerns who came before, say, 1980 mostly came here to work; on the other hand the number of non-Westerns with fugitive status or family reunification status increased dramatically after 1983 due to policy changes implemented at that point. Another dimension along which heterogeneity is relevant is the change in the country profile of descendants, change which is not only driven by a change in the immigration patterns but also related to fertility differences across subpopulations; the total fertility rate of Somali immigrants is almost twice that of Turkish immigrants (86% higher, p.26) and these differences aren’t new. It should perhaps be made clear here that even if the change in the composition of non-Western descendants in the past might have had adverse effects on some human capital measures (SES of parents, IQ…) of the descendant group ‘as a whole’, it’s far from certain that this will lead to lower educational outcomes of the group in the future – for example, political commitment to improve educational outcomes of these groups might more than make up for the other effects. From 2004 to 2011 the educational outcomes of non-Western descendants improved, but there were only 72 non-Western descendants altogether in 2004 so it’s hard to draw strong conclusions from this as we once again run into the power issue.

*One way to try to draw inferences about the future educational profiles is to look at the educational profile of descendants currently aged 20-30 years old and compare them with the historical educational profiles of the 1980-generation (the current 30-year-olds). This is done below, the first graph contains data for the current 20-30 year-olds, the second contains data for the current 30-year-olds, green = females, blue = males – the lower ones are for non-Westerns, the graphs show how big a percentage of the group had obtained an ELVQ at any given age between 20 and 30. For example, 40% of non-Western males have an ELVQ at the age of 28 (and this was also the case for the 1980-generation):

*Part of the reason why I’ve focused mostly on descendants is that it is very hard to figure out the education levels of (first-generation) immigrants, because the data the authors made use of includes only educations which are completed at Danish educational institutions. In other words, both an Italian nuclear physicist educated in Rome and a poor Sudanese woman without a primary school education will have an ‘unknown’ education level (uoplyst) in these data sets, making it harder to pinpoint just exactly what is going on. A big majority of immigrants do not have a Danish education – 77% of Western and 69% of non-Western immigrants do not have a Danish education. (p.80) However, it seems relatively clear that at least when dealing with non-Western immigrants, an ‘unknown’ education level probably most often translates to a ‘low education level’ – the employment rate of non-Western female immigrants with an unknown education level is just 33% (p80).

Data on Danish immigrants, 2011 (2)

Thanks for the feedback.

And just a remark in case you were in doubt (most people probably weren’t, but just in case) – yes, I know very well that it doesn’t make all that much sense to report population estimates on a population of millions of people 40 years into the future down to almost fractions of a person without even including error bars (like the 6.139.618 population estimate for 2050. 618 you say? Not 617?). But the report doesn’t include error bars and I don’t feel comfortable rounding these numbers – so I decided from the start to just report the numbers they give and work with those; there are all sorts of problems related to doing anything else. So anyway, here’s some more stuff from the report:

*According to Statistics Denmark’s latest model estimates, the number of non-Western immigrants in the population will grow with 39% from 2011 to 2050, so that there will be 358.000 non-Western immigrants in Denmark. Today the number is 258.000. The corresponding increase in the number of Western immigrants is estimated at 47%. (p.48)
*The number of descendants of Western immigrants is expected to increase significantly during the period, so that by 2050 the number will be 4,4 times higher than it is today. The number of descendants of non-Western immigrants is likewise expected to increase over time, by a factor of 2,2. Despite these differences in growth rates, the number of non-Western descendants is still expected to turn out to be a little more than 3 times as high as the number of Western descendants by 2050. (p.48) This is because the current number of descendants of non-Western immigrants living in Denmark is much higher (115.597) than the current number of descendants of Western immigrants (18.016) living in Denmark. (p.49)
*The ratio of the Danish population categorized as people ‘of Danish origin’ is expected to decrease over time from 89,9% in 2011 to 84,7% in 2050. (p.48)
*The total Danish population (people of Danish origin, immigrants and descendants combined) is expected to grow by 578.990 people from 2011 to 2050, from 5.560.628 people in 2011 to 6.139.618 people in 2050. The subset of Western immigrants living in Denmark is expected to increase by 79.876 over that time period, from 170.758 to 250 634. The number of descendants of Western immigrants is expected to grow by 61.477, from 18.016 to 79.493. The part of the total Danish population growth from 2011 to 2050 which can be explained by Western immigrants and their descendants is thus equal to 141.353, which is roughly one-fourth of the total estimated population growth (24,4%) (p.49). The subset of non-Western immigrants living in Denmark is expected to increase by 99.413 from 2011 to 2050, from 258.146 to 357.559. The number of descendants of non-Western immigrants is expected to grow by 135.221, from 115 597 to 250 818.
The part of the total Danish population growth from 2011 to 2050 which can be explained by non-Western immigrants and their descendants is thus equal to 234.634, or 40,5% of the total estimated population growth. The part of the population growth over the period explained by people of Danish origin is 203.003, or 35,1% of the total population growth – despite the fact that this group makes up ~85-90% of the population over the entire time period in question. (all numbers from Tabel 1.18, p.49. They didn’t actually report these specific growth component percentages in the report, but it doesn’t take much work to calculate them from the data provided and I thought they’d be interesting to have a look at.)
*When looking at age groups, a few developments are noteworthy. In 2050, people of Danish origin are expected to make out 80,7 % of people at the ages of 40-64, vs. 91,4% today. The employment level of this age group is relatively high, compared to other age groups, which is part of what makes this development interesting – non-Western immigrants in general have much lower levels of employment than do people of Danish origin; more on that stuff below. Another factor perhaps worth noting is that the percentage of immigrants from non-Western countries above 64 years old is expected to increase from 1,2% today to 7,9% in 2050 (the expected growth of Western immigrants in that age group is much smaller – from 2,5% to 3,5%). (p.49)

*The employment rate [beskæftigelsesfrekvens] of males of Danish origin was 75,1% in 2010. The employment rate of females of Danish origin was 73,0% in 2010. The employment rate of male Western immigrants was 62,8% and the employment rate of female Western immigrants was 57,4%. The employment rate of non-Western male immigrants was 53,9% in 2010. The employment rate of non-Western female immigrants was 44,6% in 2010. (p.54)
*The employment rate of non-Western male descendants was 55% in 2010, and the employment rate of female non-Western descendants was 56%. (p.51)
*The employment rate differences between people of Danish origin and non-Western immigrants are particularly pronounced in the age group of 50-59 year olds: Whereas the employment rate of that age group was 79% for females of Danish origin, the corresponding number for non-Western female immigrants was 38%. (p.51)
*The employment rate difference between males of Danish origin and male immigrants of non-Western origin was 21 percentage points in 2010, whereas the employment rate difference between females of Danish origin and female immigrants of non-Western origin was 28 percentage points in 2010.(p.51)
*In 1996 the difference in the employment rates of males of Danish origin and those of male immigrants of non-Western origin was 40 percentage points. The corresponding difference in the employment rates of females of Danish origin and those of female immigrants of non-Western origin was 44 percentage points in 1996. 1996 was two years before the first election where immigration policy became a major factor (though in terms of formation of the government, it did not decide the election – that didn’t happen until 2001).
*The previous 2008-report from Statistics Denmark contained a nice illustration of how the employment rate differences between non-Western immigrants and Danes vary with age and I decided to include it in this post – you can find it at page 65. The numbers are from 2007. Dark-blue = males, light-blue = females, the y-axis is the employment rate difference between people of Danish origin and non-Western immigrants measured in percentage points, the x-axis is age:

So, to take an example, the employment rate of non-Western female immigrants at the age of 40 was approximately 35 percentage points lower than the employment rate of females of Danish origin at the age of 40 in 2007.

*Back to the 2011 report: From 1996 to 2008 the employment rate of non-Western immigrants increased significantly; the male employment rate increased from 40% to 63% and the female employment rate increased from 26% to 50%. Here are two graphs from the report (p.53), click on them to view them in a higher resolution – the first one is on male data, the second is on female data:

Explanation:
“Indv., vestlige lande” = Immigrants from Western countries
“Indv., ikke-vestlige lande” = Immigrants from non-Western countries
“Dansk oprindelse” = Danish origin
“Eftk., vestlige lande” = Descendants, Western countries
“Eftk., ikke-vestlige lande” = Descendants, non-Western countries.
In both cases, the y-axis is the employment rate.

*Country of origin is a very important variable – not all Western countries are the same, nor are all non-Western countries the same. The employment rate of immigrants from the Netherlands is the same as that of people of Danish origin – 74%. The Polish immigrants have an employment rate of 66%, and so do the British. These employment numbers are much higher than those of the immigrants from the US, where the employment rate is just 49%. (p.57) However, ‘many young Western immigrants come to Denmark to study, they’re often only here for a short while and return home after they’ve finished their coursework here’ (paraphrasing some of the relevant remarks on p.76). The authors don’t go into any details about the US immigrants in the report, but I think it’s safe to say that they are more likely to be university students than are immigrants from, say, Poland – the lower employment rates probably shouldn’t be all that surprising. Employment rates on their own don’t care about differences in labor force participation rates.
*Non-Western immigrants generally have lower employment rates, and it’s also among these countries of origin that we find the subpopulations with the lowest employment numbers. The bottom three are Iraq (36% employed), Lebanon (35% employed) and Somalia (31% employed). Less than one in four of female Lebanese immigrants in Denmark are employed. But worth noticing here is also that some of the non-Western countries do quite well: 67% of Ukrainians are employed, and so are 63% of the immigrants from Thailand. (p.57)

A table from the report (p.57), click on it to view it full size:

As I know a lot of terms might cause problems I decided to add an explanation. It was either that, translate everything and make my own table or report some more of the numbers in the text – I decided you should have the data but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time reconstructing that table. You can probably figure out a lot of the stuff I’ve translated below on your own, but in my experience it’s very nice to not have to be the least bit in doubt when reading tables like these. If you have questions, ask:
Title: Employment rates of 16-64 year olds. 2010.
“Antal personer”: Number of people. (antal = number)
“Beskæftigelsesfrekvens”: Employment rate.
“Mænd” = Males.
“Kvinder” = Females.
“I alt” = Total/combined.

“Indvandrere, vestlige lande”: Immigrants, Western countries
Nederlandene = The Netherlands
Storbritannien = Great Britain
Polen = Poland
Rumænien = Romania
Sverige = Sweden
Tyskland = Germany
Litauen = Lithuania
Norge = Norway
Island = Iceland
Italien = Italy
Frankrig = France

“Indvandrere, ikke-vestlige lande” = Immigrants, non-Western countries
Kina = China
Tyrkiet = Turkey
Rusland = Russia
Indien = India
Jugoslavien = Jugoslavia
Marokko = Morocco
Filippinerne = The Philippines
Irak = Iraq
Libanon = Lebanon

The specific 30 countries were chosen because those were the 30 countries of origin with the highest amounts of 16-64 year olds.

…

The employment rate is somewhat dependent on how long people have lived here, so the authors also decided to split up the data using that variable. Again, click to view it full size:

From page 60. Additional explanation:
Title (roughly): ‘Employment rates of 16-64-year old immigrants – distributed based on the amount of time spent in Denmark. 2010.’
‘Opholdstid’ = Time spent in Denmark.
‘Under 3 år’ = Less than 3 years.
’3-6 år’ = 3-6 years. [I think you get the picture...]
‘Over 15 år’ = More than 15 years.

*Do note when interpreting the employment numbers of e.g. Filipino women that people who are employed as au-pairs are not counted as employed. (p.59)

*’Even when taking into account differences in the amounts of time spent in the country, there are still big differences. Immigrants from Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia who have been in Denmark for at least a decade have employment rates between 30% and 41%. Immigrants from the Philippines, China and Thailand who’ve been in Denmark for at least a decade have employment rates between 67% and 75%.’ (p.59)

—

I’ll post at least one more post on this subject. I will probably add the posts together into one single post when I’m done.

Data on Danish immigrants, 2011 (1?)

The central Danish statistical office, Statistics Denmark, has just published a report with a lot of data on Danish immigrants, Immigrants in Denmark, 2011. I thought some of the non-Danes reading along might appreciate a post in English on this subject.

At the site, they’ve given no indications that they’re planning to translate this, so I don’t think an English version of this material is coming up anytime soon. My translation of the stuff is better than what you’d get from google translate, but do remember that I’m not exactly a professional translator. I’ve decided to page-source every bit of data for this reason, so that it’s easier to go have a look for yourself if you’re in doubt. It was most convenient for me to page-source the pdf version pages, not the official page numbers at the top of each page in the report. Don’t think of the statements below as direct quotations from the report – I’ve frequently had to reformulate the expressions used in the report. If something’s unclear, please ask away. Anyway, let’s start:

*10,1 % of the Danish population are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. (p.13)
*Immigrants make up 7,7% and descendants make up 2,4%. (p.13) [A small note here: The report only explicitly mentions the 10,1% and the 7,7%, not the 2,4% - but I think it's safe to assume that this is a simple subtraction problem and that it makes good sense to post that number as well just for completeness.]
*60,2% of all immigrants are from non-Western countries. (p.13)
*66% of all immigrants and descendants are from non-Western countries. (p.25)
*The number of non-Western immigrants has almost sextupled since 1980. (p.14)
*From 1980 to 2011, the number of non-Western descendants has increased from 7.653 to 115.597. (p.15)
*The number of descendants of Western immigrants grew by 70% from 1980 to 2011. (p.15)

*The immigrants living in Denmark come from more than 200 countries. (p.15)
*The distribution is asymmetric. Immigrants from the top 12 countries (in terms of number of immigrants living in Denmark) make up 50% of all immigrants. (p.15)
*Turkey is at the top of the list with 32 479 immigrants living in Denmark. (p.15)
*5 out of the top 12 countries are Western countries (Germany, Poland, Norway, Sweden, GB). 7 are Non-western countries (Turkey, Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, ex-Jugoslavia). (p.16)
*There’s significant variation in the age distribution of immigrants from different countries. When looking at the top twelve, 20% of the Western immigrants in that group are 60 years old or older, whereas only 10% of the non-Western immigrants in the top-twelve are 60 years old or older. (p.16)
*As to the Poles, they’re an interesting case because they’re quite different from the rest of the Western immigrants. They’re the third largest immigrant population (26 580) in Denmark – the number of Polish born people living in Denmark is higher than the number of immigrants from Sweden and Great Britain combined – and more than half of the Poles (53%) are between 20 and 40. 68% of the Polish immigrants are between 20 and 49 years old. 10 % of them are 60 years or older. (p.16)

*When looking at the descendant populations living in Denmark, 11 out of the top 12 countries are non-Western countries. More than one in five (21%) of all descendants living in Denmark are descendants of Turkish immigrants. Lebanon and Pakistan are next on the list, with 9% and 7% respectively. (p.17)
*Most descendants are quite young. 41% of them are below the age of 10, and only 10% have reached the age of 30.

[I used to comment on this fact back when I did political discussions, because it is often overlooked or simply ignored in discussions about what might be termed the demographic potential of descendant populations. We have no idea how many children descendants will end up having, and it makes no sense to try to draw strong conclusions out of sample from the data sets that are available now. Please have this in mind when we get to the forecasts later on. Putting the above numbers in context, the average age of women having their first child in Denmark was 29,1 years in 2010 (Statistikbanken, FOD11). I also urge people to remember here that the growth rate of population segment X in a population doesn't just depend on the total fertility rate differential, but also on age of birth differentials. If women from population segment X get children at the age of 30 and women from population segment Y get children at the age of 20, population segment Y will grow faster than population segment X, even if every single woman in the two population segments have the same amount of children. This remark is relevant because non-Western immigrants as a rule get children at a lower age than ethnic Danes. Females of Danish origin get on average 0,21 children during the period of their lives where they are 20-24 years old. For all non-Western female immigrants, the corresponding average number is 0,35. For Lebanese women, the number is 0,72. (pp. 27-28)]

*Western descendants are much older than non-Western descendants, on average. [worsening the data problems mentioned above. Especially if you mix up the Westerns and non-Westerns - does it make sense to extrapolate birth rates of Turkish descendants in 2015 from the historical birth rates of descendants of Norwegian women?] One third of the descendants of Western immigrants are above the age of 30, whereas only 6% of the descendants of non-Western immigrants are that old. (p.18)
*Descendants from Turkey, Pakistan, Jugoslavia or Morocco make up 77% of all 30+ year old descendants from non-Western countries. (p.18)
*The total fertility rate of Somali immigrants in Denmark is 3,937. (p.26)
*In the period 2006-2010, there were an average of 64.056 living births pr. year. In the same period, there were an average of 5.860 (9,1%) children born every year of non-Western immigrants and an average of 2.310 (3,6%) children every year born of Western immigrants. The average annual number of children of descendants over the time period was just 961. (p.26)

*The report has some stats on family patterns and the degree of observed endogamy. When it comes to male immigrants from Western countries who are classified as being in a relationship, in 59% of the cases the partner is of Danish origin and in 37% of the cases the partner is an immigrant from a Western country. When it comes to the female immigrants from a Western country, 63% of the partners are of Danish origin and in one-third of the cases it’s a Western immigrant. The pattern is different when it comes to immigrants from non-Western countries. For male immigrants from non-Western countries, 13% have partners of Danish origin and 80% have partners from a non-Western country. For female immigrants from non-Western countries, 28% have partners of Danish origin and 68% have partners of non-Western origin. Interestingly, when it comes to descendants Western immigrants are more likely to have a partner of Danish origin than are first generation immigrants (83% and 85% for males and females respectively), whereas this pattern is actually reversed for females from non-Western countries, where descendants are less likely to have a Danish partner than are first generation immigrants (19% of females who are descendants of immigrants from non-Western countries with a partner have a partner of Danish origin, whereas the corresponding number for the first generation non-Western female immigrants is 28%.) 3 out of 5 non-Western descendants who are in a relationship are in a relationship with a non-Western immigrant and 18% of them have a partner who’s also a descendant of immigrants from a non-Western country. (all numbers above from Tabel 1.9, p.32)
*When it comes to the non-Western females who find Danish male partners, few of these women come from the major immigrant countries. Of the 19.981 female non-Western immigrants with a partner of Danish origin, females from Thailand, Philippines, Russia, China, Brazil and Ukraine make up 11.644 of them – 58%. (p.33)
*Females from Thailand and Philippines alone make up 39% of the non-Western females who have partners of Danish origin. (p.34)
*When it comes to females from Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq, only 2% of them have a partner of Danish origin. (p.34)
*97% of female Turkish immigrants with a partner have a partner of Turkish origin. 94% of Pakistani females in a relationship have a partner of Pakistani origin. (p.35)
*88% of Turkish descendants in a relationship have a partner of Turkish origin. (p.37)

*Today the country from which Denmark receives the largest number of immigrants is Poland. Denmark received 3850 Polish immigrants in 2010. (p.38)
*(not direct citation but paraphrasing…)’Immigrants from Western countries like USA, Spain and Italy rarely come to Denmark to live here permanently and a large share of them leave Denmark again.’ – ‘This is not the case for non-Western immigrants.’ (p.40) Some data: 77% of the Poles who came to Denmark in 2002 had left the country by January 1st, 2011. 88% of the immigrants from the US who came in 2002 had left Denmark by 2011. On the other hand, only 9 percent of Iraqis who came in 2002 had left by 2011. 24% of the Turks who arrived in 2002 had left by 2011. (all numbers from table, p.39) [the 9% number is interesting also because during that time period, Denmark actually had various policies (Danish links) in place where Iraqis who decided to leave Denmark could get a one-time cash prize for doing so.]

This post dealt with roughly the first 40 pages of the report. The report has 153 pages. So there’s a lot of stuff to cover – there’s also data on education, crime, employment, ect. I might write another post or two on this subject if people liked this one.

Major related hint: If you’d like me to write another post on this, tell me, either by using the rating system or by commenting. If I don’t get positive feedback, I probably won’t do any more work on this – it adds a not insignificant time component to not being able to just quote directly from the report because the stuff needs to be translated as well.

The Danish ‘justice’ system

(Mostly to the non-Danish readers) So, yeah, if you’re living in Denmark and you’re not a Danish citizen and you somehow one day decide that it would be a good idea to arm yourself with an ax and a knife and break into somebody’s house and try to kill the guy living there, and you’re unsuccessfull but then get the brilliant idea that if you couldn’t kill that guy, you should at least try to kill the policemen who’re trying to arrest you afterwards; well, then you can expect to get 9 years in jail and to get deported afterwards.

Wage and labor mobility in Denmark, 1980-2000

This new working paper from nber looks interesting, especially for the non-Danish readers of this blog who don’t know much, if anything, about the Danish labour market.

I have not been able to find a free online version of it, but I would assume that it is not fundamentally different from the 2004-version of the same (?) paper, which is available here.

The concluding remarks to the 2004 paper:

[...] the institutional setup of the Danish labor markets differs from that found in most other European countries, but also from that in the neighboring Nordic countries, in that it has removed a number of barriers to mobility. This is in a sense only natural because for a long time, almost a century, Danish wage setting has been highly centralized and furthermore characterized a very compressed wage structure, leaving only limited scope for employers to adjust to changed labor market conditions via wages. Worker mobility is indeed high. We show
that despite high turnover rates, a considerable portion of workers are in long-term employment relationships. However, the share of long-term jobs is found to be lower than in the United States.

Second, the ongoing process towards increasingly decentralized wage bargaining and wage setting, starting in the second half of the eighties, has given rise to an increase, albeit of relatively modest magnitude, in the dispersion of wages. The widening wage distribution seems to be mainly due to increasing wage differentials between firms, not within. In parallel, the level and between-firm variance in returns to human capital have increased. The shift to decentralized wage bargaining has coincided with deregulation and increased product market competition. The evidence appears not to be consisten with increased product market competition eroding firm-specific rents, however.

The bold part of the quote above are exactly the same words as those used in the abstract to the new 2007 paper, which is one of the reasons I doubt there’s much new revolutionary stuff to be found here compared to the older paper.

Table 4, which illustrate that the estimated returns to education (the authors call it “skill”, which I find somewhat problematic) has almost doubled during the period, is perhaps worth a blog post of its own.