An Analysis of Immigrants’ Participation in Adult Education in Sweden

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent different groups of immigrants in Sweden take part in two adult education measures, the Adult Education Initiative (AEI) and Labor Market Training (LMT). A multinomial logit model is estimated using register data. The results show that the probability to participate in the AEI, instead of being openly unemployed, in general is lower among immigrants than among natives with two Swedish born parents. However, differences in the probability to participate in the AEI exist between groups with different region of heritage. Some evidence is also found indicating that the probability to participate in the AEI is higher for more recent immigrant cohorts than for earlier. Moreover, for some region of heritage groups, the results indicate that naturalized immigrants have a higher probability to participate in the AEI than non-naturalized immigrants. The probability to participate in LMT, instead of being openly unemployed, is in general higher among immigrants than among natives with two Swedish born parents. Crudely, one might say that the probability to participate tends to be higher in region of heritage groups with a weaker position in the labor market. In line with what was shown for the AEI, there is also a weak tendency that more recently arrived immigrants have a higher probability to participate than earlier immigrants. No large differences concerning the probability to participate in LMT, instead of being openly unemployed, are found between naturalized immigrants and non-naturalized immigrants.