Child-centered research

Children’s and youth’s living conditions are important here-and-now – not only as predictors of later outcomes – and studies of their situation should be based on their own reports. This child perspective has been inspiring the data collections carried out by the Level-of-living-team in the Child Level of Living Survey (Barn-LNU)  2000, 2010, and 2020. In Child-LNU, children aged 10–18 are interviewed and followed over time into adulthood.

Also the IneQint team at IFFS collect longitudinal information from young people over time in the Youth in Europe Survey (YES!), with a special focus on integration. The first cohort of 14-year-olds (born 1996) have now been studied into early adulthood, and a new cohort of 14-year olds (born 2011) starts in 2026.

Integration among children of immigrants

With her research teams, Carina studies integration in a multidimensional perspective, including structural, social, cultural, and psychological aspects. Some recent publications in this field are:

• Inequalities in early childhood education and care by immigrant background
• Attitudes in motion: acculturation in views on family, sexuality and gender roles among immigrant-background youth in Sweden
• Persistent boundaries. Partnership patterns among children of immigrants and natives in Sweden

And in Swedish:

• Karriärer och barriärer: En ESO-rapport om skolgång och etablering för unga med utländsk bakgrund (A report on education and early careers among young people of immigrant background).
• Integration bland unga: En mångkulturell generation växer upp (Integration among youth: A multicultural generation grows up) – can also be downloaded for free here.

Check out the companion website with facts about integration among youth in Sweden!

Poverty

Together with Jan O Jonsson and Simon Hjalmarsson, Carina does research on poverty and economic inequality, including studies on child poverty based on child reports. See, for example:

• Vad är ’fattigdom’ och hur bör den mätas?
• Den nya fattigdomen
• The social consequences of poverty: An empirical test on longitudinal data

And in 2026, two chapters in Boye & Westerman (Eds.) Välfärd och livsvillkor. Stockholm: Liber:

• Chapter 1.1. Ekonomiska resurser och fattigdom [Economic resources and poverty]
• Chapter 1.2. Barns och ungas ekonomiska välfärd [The economic welfare of children and youth]

Intergenerational mobility

In this field, Carina has studied intergenerational transmission of advantage in different domains. Her ongoing research is about sibling differences in intergenerational mobility (with Per Engzell and Jan O Jonsson) and intergenerational mobility of children of immigrants (with Are Skeie Hermansen and Said Hassan).

For examples of research in this field, see, for example:

• Understanding Patterns and Trends in Income Mobility through Multiverse Analysis.
• It’s all about the parents: inequality transmission across three generations in Sweden