The power of data: How can countries transform their future?

A recent study makes it clear: countries like Sweden, a country that can link data from different areas such as the labor market and healthcare, have a decisive advantage in establishing specific actions to help refugees. A research team analyzed data from 41,516 refugees and 207,729 Swedish-born people between the ages of 20 and 25 between 2012 and 2016 to investigate how mental and somatic illnesses influence labor market integration.

The study shows that both mental and somatic disorders pose the risk of unsuccessful labor market integration in both groups, but this effect is more pronounced among young refugees. The strongest risk factor for long-term unemployment is refugee status itself. In addition, refugees are less likely to receive disability pensions.

The study also suggests that refugees, who have often experienced massive trauma, have poorer access to the health care system and often need to have a higher level of severity before an illness is diagnosed, which can further exacerbate labor market integration.

In Sweden, Finland and Denmark, there are already developed registry environments that allow anonymous information on health, labor market integration and refugee status to be linked centrally and securely evaluated, this allows researchers to analyze the interaction of these three factors.

The findings help decision-makers to take action to improve the situation where appropriate, such as implementing strategies to promote the inclusion and participation of refugee youth in the labor market, reduce social disadvantage within the refugee population, and potentially improve the economic stability of these countries.

This study can only be transferred to other countries to a limited extent due to the different social and health care systems, as well as the different areas of origin of the refugees.