Study title

Ethnic Diversity and Preferences for Redistribution attempts to explain if individual's preferences for redistribution change if the ethnic diversity increases in a municipality. In this case, selected parts of the Swedish Election Studies has been matched with municipal data for the time period between 1985 and 1994, when Sweden had an active placement program of refugees. This meant that the refugees themselves were not allowed to decide where to settle, but instead they were places in municipalities which had contracts with the Swedish Integration Board (Invandrarverket). Originally the idea of the program was to direct the refugees to municipalities with good labor market conditions, but since the number of refugees arriving to Sweden were larger than expected, so in practice more or less all municipalities were a part of the program. With the placement program refugees spread more across the country, than before the program. Ethnic Diversity and Preferences for Redistribution focus primarily on refugees from nations which not were members in the OECD 1994 and Turkey. The data comes from the Swedish Election Studies survey waves for the elections in 1982, 1985, 1988, 1991 and 1994. Primarily it consists of various background variables and variables about individual's preferences for private health care, nuclear power and social benefits. The municipal data primarily consist of various socio-economic and political variables, such as population, tax base, welfare spending and share of refugees. Some of these variables are the average of the term (1986-1988, 1989-1991, and 1992-1994). Purpose: Investigate the causal link between the ethnic diversity in a society and its inhabitants´ preferences for redistribution.