Did more generous unemployment insurance benefits contribute to worker reallocation during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Jan Sauermann, Olle Törnquist, and Sebastian Butschek

This project explores how changes to Sweden’s unemployment insurance (UI) system during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced job search outcomes and labor market mobility. In response to rising unemployment, the Swedish government temporarily expanded UI access and generosity – reducing the membership requirement and increasing benefit levels. Using nationwide register data, we study whether unemployed individuals shifted toward more stable sectors and how the UI reforms affected job-finding rates, job quality, and firm characteristics.

How does unemployment insurance protect the families of workers who lose their jobs?

Anna Sjögren, Lisa Laun, Hanna Mühlrad, and Jan Sauermann

This project examines how expanded access to unemployment insurance (UI) during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the economic and social well-being of Swedish families. By comparing families of job-losers who qualified for UI due to pandemic-era reforms to those who did not, the study explores how UI affects family income, reliance on means-tested benefits, household stability, and children’s outcomes – such as school performance and mental health. The project contributes to a broader research agenda on the role of the welfare state in mitigating the consequences of economic shocks.

Mental health of COVID-19 patients and their family members

Fang Fang, Unnur Valdimarsdóttir, Tove Fall, Mary Barker, and Shiyu Li

This project investigates the risk of mental illness among individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 and their family members in Sweden. Using nationwide register data from SWECOV, we will assess how COVID-19 disease severity influences the development of mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal behavior. The study includes two large cohort analyses comparing individuals with and without COVID-19, and their relatives, to explore the psychological impact of infection, hospitalization, and bereavement.

Did COVID-19 have lasting effects on the spatial allocation of local services?

Oskar Nordström Skans, Adam Gill, and Lena Hensvik

The COVID-19 pandemic had a massive temporary effect on people’s mobility patterns. Recent evidence suggests that part of this adjustment is here to stay – the pandemic appears to have had lasting effects on the incidence of working-from-home n many countries. Data from the US indicates that this may change the spatial economic structure of cities – the rise of the “donut” city. In this paper, we focus on the allocation of services as an indicator of real spatial effects of increased WFH induced by the pandemic.

Age at migration and COVID-19

Oskar Nordström Skans, Olof Åslund, Erik Grönqvist, and Tram Pham

This project analyzes how age at migration affected outcomes and behavior during the most severe phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project focuses primarily on outcomes in adulthood among people who immigrated to Sweden as children (or who were born just after their parents arrived). We quantify how COVID-19 disparities differ between individuals as a function of how much of their childhood was spent in Sweden. Previous research has shown that host-country exposure during childhood have large causal effects on adulthood outcomes in such diverse dimensions such as Height, Education, Earnings and Social Integration at the Housing, Marriage and Labor markets.

Inequalities in mortality going in and out of the pandmic: The contribution of age and cause of death to changes in life expectancy by education during 2015-2022.

Olle Lundberg, Olof Östergren, Adam Altmejd, Marcus Ebeling, and Karin Modig

Life expectancy in Sweden decreased between 2019 and 2020 from 84.7 to 84.3 years for women and from 81.3 to 80.6 for men. Between 2020 and 2021, life expectancy increased to 84.8 years among women and 81.2 years among men. The loss of life expectancy in 2020 was largely recovered in 2021 and among women, life expectancy in 2021 was higher than before the pandemic. However, both the decrease in life expectancy and the recovery in 2021 differed by educational attainment.

Medical scandals and vaccine hesitancy

Svenja Miltner, and Jonatan Riberth

In this project we consider the effects on vaccine hesitancy and health care utilization from an unusual medical scandal. Following the 2009–2010 swine flu pandemic, Sweden adopted a mass vaccination campaign where 60% of the Swedish population was vaccinated against the Swine flu. A number of individuals developed narcolepsy, a severe, incurable neurological disease, from the swine flu vaccine. We use individual level data on Covid and swine flu vaccinations to measure vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic among the affected individuals.

Individual and aggregate consequences of post-covid conditions

Adam Altmejd, Torsten Persson, Olof Östergren, Anna Mia Ekström, Oskar Nordström Skans, Maxim Kan, and Nicola Orsini

The purpose of the project is to describe how long-COVID, or post-COVID-19, conditions (PCC), have affected Swedish society. The project will start by describing (i) those who suffer from PCC, (ii) whether the burden of disease is unequally distributed across social groups, and (iii) some of the implications for those diagnosed. Next, we will evaluate if vaccines provide some protection from PCC. We will also estimate the labor-market effects of PCC.

Pre-Booked Appointment Letters for Increasing Vaccination Coverage in Target Populations

Tove Fall, Georgios Varotsis, Carl Bonander, Anna Sarkadi, Helena Svaleryd, and Ulf Hammar

Prevention is a key task for the healthcare system, as is provision of equitable healthcare for the whole population. Vulnerable groups for adverse outcomes of respiratory infections include the elderly, groups with low socioeconomic status (SES), and those living with certain chronic diseases, groups that traditionally have lower vaccination uptake rates. There is therefore a need to find tools that increase vaccination coverage among these groups. In Sweden, regional strategies have included vaccination buses and drop-in vaccinations.

Symptoms reported through the Swedish Healthcare Guide 1177 for disease surveillance and hospital predictions

Tove Fall, Jonas Björk, Ulf Hammar, Per Lundmark, and Georgios Varotsis

Disease surveillance is crucial during a pandemic because it allows informed decisions and evaluation of the effectiveness of implemented policies. Our study aims to develop new methods for real-time surveillance of respiratory virus spread and to predict surges in hospital admissions based on >4 million yearly calls to the Swedish Healthcare Guide 1177 phone-line, a largely untapped resource for syndromic surveillance. We have two main aims: Development of methods to estimate the daily infection prevalence at a local level 2020-2022 based on national health inquiry calls to Swedish Healthcare Guide 1177 phone-line linked to subsequent PCR and antibody test results using COVID-19 as a model.

Understanding social inequalities in Covid-19 testing behavior

Olof Östergren, Arizo Karimi, Emelie Counil, Jonas Björk, Tove Fall, and Karl Gauffin

Groups with lower socioeconomic status have suffered disproportionately from severe Covid-19. However, more cases were detected among individuals in higher socioeconomic positions. These seemingly conflicting observations are in part attributed to differences in testing behavior; individuals in lower socioeconomic positions in Sweden had lower testing rates and higher positivity rates compared to those in higher positions. The propensity to get tested can depend on several things. Some factors may motivate the individual to get tested while others can make the individual more likely to avoid taking a test.

Predictors of COVID-19 outcomes among residents of Swedish long-term care facilities—a nationwide study of the year 2020

Jenna Najar, Rasmus Broms, Marina Nistotskaya, and Carl Dahlström

What is the primary question addressed by this study? This study examines predictors for SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 death among residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs), using Swedish nation-wide data for the whole pandemic year of 2020. What is the main finding of this study? We found that several factors were associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 death. All-cause dementia was a particularly strong predictor of COVID-19 death, especially among those aged 65-75 years.

Sweden's COVID-19 Recession: How Foreign and Domestic Infections Struck against Firms and Workers

Anders Akerman, Karolina Ekholm, Torsten Persson, and Oskar N. Skans

The COVID-19 pandemic had massive contractionary effects on most economies across the globe. However, the economic effects varied tremendously both within and across countries. We use highly granular Swedish micro-data to document the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Swedish private-sector firms and their workers. The study shows that trading firms suffered larger output losses if they exported to, or imported from, countries with high COVID-rates and/or disruptive COVID restrictions.