"Income differences and residential segregation have increased in Sweden in recent decades"

Gabriella Kindström, PhD student in economics

Residential segregation is widespread in Sweden's urban areas. But what causes it and what solutions are possible? This is the focus of doctoral student Gabriella Kindström's thesis, which she is currently working on.

Housing is one of the most central parts of people's lives - at the same time, housing is both a scarce commodity and an object of unequal distribution. This constantly hot and socially relevant topic of who lives where and why, also interests doctoral student Gabriella Kindström, who already addressed the topic in her master's thesis in economics. Now she is building on it in her thesis at IBF.
- Among other things, I am looking at how the representation of income groups changes over time in different residential buildings and connect it to moving chains, says Gabriella Kindström.

Three projects together form the basis for her thesis. One, which she is running together with her supervisor, is about housing supply, housing inequality and new construction, and how new construction affects the distribution of housing based on income. That is: Who, in terms of income, moves to newly built housing and how the representation of different income groups in a residential building changes over time.
- Income differences and residential segregation have increased in Sweden in recent decades. At the same time, there has been an increase in house prices and increased competition for rental properties, which mainly affects low-income earners, says Gabriella Kindström.

Gabriella Kindström and her supervisor Che-Yuan Liang, senior lecturer in economics at IBF, are also investigating whether new construction affects residential segregation and if so how. And they can preliminarily see an indication of a gentrification process. Among those moving into areas with a large proportion of new construction, there is an overrepresentation of high-income earners. At the same time, the proportion of low-income earners tends to decrease when new construction increases in an area.
– But if you look at the moving chain, you can already see in the next step that the proportion of high-income earners and low-income earners is equal. So even if new construction is not directly available to individuals with low incomes, older housing benefits them because of the vacancies that arise.

In the third project, which is her own, she is investigating how residential areas are affected by school closures and school openings. Who moves when a school closes and who stays?
– It shows how important the school is for the area you live in, says Gabriella Kindström.

What problems do you want to highlight with your research?
– Housing costs have increased a lot and a large proportion of people's expenses consist of housing. At the same time, residential segregation has increased. It is very relevant right now, not only the consequences of that but also what drives that development.
– We need to continue studying what different factors there are that affect how people move. There is so much data on this.

Gabriella Kindström conducts the research itself largely by analyzing data in IBF's database GeoSweden, which contains data on housing, population and moving patterns over 25 years. She is also affiliated with Urban Lab, which is a research initiative between IBF and the Department of Economics, and where Uppsala Municipality is one of the major financiers. Gabriella Kindström:
– This collaboration is very valuable for getting feedback from those who actually work with this in society and for gaining practical knowledge of how things work there.