Deaf people and the labour market in Sweden Education – Employment – Economy

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Emelie Rydberg

Deaf people and the labour market in Sweden

Education – Employment – Economy

Studies from The Swedish Institute for Disability Research No. 32

School of Health and Medical Science Örebro university 2010

The Swedish Institute for Disability Research

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issn 1650-1128 isbn 978-91-7668-728-4 2010

emelie rydberg, has a Bachelor’s degree in Hearing Science and has also studied Sociology, Special Education and the Swedish sign lan-guage. This thesis was carried out within the Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Örebro University, Sweden.

The thesis focuses on deaf people’s education, employment and income. These issues are inter-related, as higher levels of educational attain-ment are associated with lower unemployattain-ment rate and higher levels of income. The national context is Sweden and the Swedish welfare state in 2005.

There are differences between the deaf and a general reference population concerning level of educational attainment, position on the labour market and sources of revenue and disposable income, with the deaf population having a poorer position than the reference population in all these areas. There are also differences between the workplaces of the deaf and the people in the reference population, and it is twice as common for people in the deaf population than for people in the reference population to have a higher level of educational attainment than is required for their occupation.

These differences between the deaf and the reference populations cannot be statistically explained by differences in independent factors, such as sex, age and immigration background, for which the results have been adjusted. It seems as though being part of the deaf population is crucial. Factors in conjunction with deafness that can increase our understanding of the differences between the deaf and the reference populations in an educational context, labour market context and economic context are also discussed in the thesis.