Homeownership Across Immigrant Groups and Generations in Sweden: Assimilation or Segmentation?

Homeownership is an important indicator of immigrant integration. Using large administrative individual-level longitudinal data from Sweden, we investigate entry into homeownership across immigrant groups and generations. We differentiate between immigrants arriving as adults (1G) and children (1.5G) and between descendants of immigrants with two (2G) and one (2.5G) foreign-born parent(s). We consider immigrants from both high and low- to middle-income countries. We include all immigrants who arrived in Sweden during 1997-2016 and Swedish-born individuals who became 18 between 1997 and 2016. Results were obtained using survival analysis. Immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa have the lowest propensity to move into homeownership, whereas immigrants from Nordic countries, Western Europe and North America have the highest. A very large proportion of immigrants, especially those from Nordic and Western Europe moved to first-time homeownership already in their first year in Sweden. In general, we observe a clear gradient across immigrant generations: the 2.5G has homeownership levels closer to native Swedes than the other generations. However, the 2G, especially from low-income countries show slightly lower entry levels into homeownership than the 1.5G. Overall, our results support gradual housing assimilation and integration across migrant generations, but also highlights the special circumstances during migrants’ first year in Sweden as well as demonstrate the importance of financial resources, the reason for immigration and the socio-cultural background for housing careers.