Labour market exits in a former out-of-home care population: A birth cohort-based sequence analysis

Children placed in out-of-home care (OHC) are likely to have experienced substantial adversity early. Although OHC is intended to provide these children with improved life chances, research has consistently found them to be at greater risk of long-term health and socioeconomic disadvantages. Importantly, these disadvantages tend to be multidimensional, mutually reinforcing, and cumulative.

About the study

Weak labour market attachment is one such outcome, and is more common among former OHC populations. Long-term or repeated periods of unemployment and sick leave can simultaneously signal health and socioeconomic disadvantage, and play an important part in shaping labour market exit routes. Furthermore, early labour market exits are a socially stratified phenomenon, commonly patterned by gender and education.

This study is based on the Stockholm Birth Cohort Multigenerational Study (SBC Multigen), which comprises all individuals born in 1953 and living in the greater Stockholm metropolitan area at age 10 (n = 14 608). The follow-up for our study was from age 55 to age 68 (2008-2021) and included all individuals alive at the beginning of follow-up and with sufficient information to determine a labour market state for each year (n = 13 024). For the multinomial logistic regression including education, the sample size was slightly smaller (n = 12 922) due to missing information on that variable. The analyses in the smaller sub-sample of individuals with OHC experience comprised n = 872 observations, and n = 862 for the multinomial regression models including education.

This study confirmed that populations with a high prevalence of severe childhood adversity, such as former OHC populations, experience intersecting health and socioeconomic disadvantages into retirement. Despite this, a considerable share follows the normative exit route of employment to pension, pointing to underlying resilience processes. Education may play a role in these resilience processes: while attaining upper secondary or higher levels of education did not fully buffer the impact of childhood adversity, it decreased the likelihood of following some of the most disadvantageous exit routes.

Future research should identify additional resilience factors in this context. Our results showed that following non-normative labour exit routes may jeopardise well-being after retirement, translating into lower pension levels for some exit route types. Social policies should work to prevent accumulated disadvantage from limiting opportunities for healthy ageing.

Highlights

“Individuals with experience of out-of-home care placement have a higher risk of non-normative exit routes.”

Publication details

Bornscheuer, L., Jackisch, J., Gauffin, K., & Almquist, Y. B. (2025). Labour market exits in a former out-of-home care population: A birth cohort-based sequence analysis. SSM-Population Health, 101885.

Read more: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2025.101885

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