Lina Aldén (fd Andersson)

Lina Aldén is an Associate Professor of Economics. Her research focuses on the determinants and consequences of social and economic inequality across the life course, with particular attention to the roles of families, education, labor markets, and institutions. Currently, her research examines how marriage, divorce, inheritance, pensions, and private agreements shape economic security and gender inequality. Using large-scale administrative data, she explores how legal institutions, families, and public policy interact.

Current teaching includes the courses Economics of Migration (undergraduate) and Advanced Labour Economics (master). She also serves as the coordinator for the specialization in Economics within the Business and Economics program.

Lina Aldén received her PhD in Economics from Växjö University in 2009 and was appointed Associate Professor at Linnaeus University in 2013. She has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. She previously served as an editor of Ekonomisk Debatt and as a member of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council. She currently serves on the editorial advisory board of Ekonomisk Debatt and on the research council of the Swedish Public Employment Service. She also serves on the faculty board of the School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Male fertility, partnership formation, and earnings

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI), Malin Tallås Ahlzén (IFAU) and Marianne Sundström (SOFI); Funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR) and the Jan Wallander & Tom Hedelius Foundation.

This project aims to investigate the causal mechanisms behind male childlessness and the lack of or low usage of parental leave among fathers. As the extensive margins of male fertility and parental leave have been largely overlooked in the existing literature, despite their relevance for both research and policy, our project fills a knowledge gap. We also study the impact of technological change on inequality for labour market, family, demographic, and health outcomes of men and women.

Reesults of the project are summarized in the SNS research report "The Modern Father - Changing Preconditions for Fatherhood". 

Sibling spillovers in education

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI; Funded by the Jan Wallander & Tom Hedelius Foundation.

This project investigates how family background and sibling relationships affect educational and labor market outcomes. Drawing on large-scale administrative data and quasi-experimental research designs, it examines the extent to which experiences within the family contribute to differences in later-life attainment. The findings will enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying educational and economic inequality and provide evidence relevant to policy development.

Marital Agreements and Economic Gender Equality

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI), Anna Nordén (JIBS), Maria Arango Kure (JIBS), Hanna Almlöf (LiU); Funded by Åke Wiberg's Foundation and the Kamprad Family Foundation

This project examines marital agreements and how they shape economic security and gender equality both within marriage and at divorce. In Sweden, matrimonial law is based on the principle that the value of spouses' assets minus debts is as a default divided equally upon divorce, a principle designed to protect the financially weaker spouse, particularly those who have earned less or taken on greater responsibility for home and family. Couples can, however, choose to depart from this arrangement through a marital agreement specifying how their assets should be divided. Today, roughly one in five married people in Sweden is estimated to have such an agreement. Yet despite their prevalence, we know surprisingly little about who enters into these agreements, what they actually stipulate, and what consequences they carry. This gap matters, because marital agreements ultimately determine how economic resources and risks are allocated between spouses, yet they have remained largely invisible to researchers, as they are not captured in standard administrative data. This project addresses that gap by combining a unique dataset of all marital agreements registered in Sweden with detailed administrative records on, for example, income and family circumstances. Tracking individuals and couples over time, we examine who draws up marital agreements, what kinds of arrangements they choose, and how different agreement types relate to economic security and equality over the life course. The findings will contribute to research on family law and economic inequality, and inform broader public debate about how legislation and private contracts together shape people's financial lives.

Grey Divorce: Economic and Social Consequences for Elderly 

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI), Johannes Hagen (JIBS), Anna Nordén (JIBS), and Jana Schuetz (JIBS). Funded by Kamprad Family Foundation

Despite the decline in gender inequality in the labour market, differences in pension outcomes remain large and persistent. One potentially important and relatively under-researched explanation is that divorce among older people has increased sharply in recent decades. When couples separate late in life, opportunities to recover financial losses are limited, and women are hit particularly hard since pension rights are not divided upon divorce. In this research project, we analyse the economic and social consequences of divorce after the age of 50— so-called grey divorces. We examine how incomes, pensions and wellbeing change when peope divorce late in life. We also study the adjustments that women and men make in terms of work and pension withdrawals, as well as the role of marital agreements, both in relation to the risk of divorcing and the financial consequences when a separation does occur. A central part of the project is the collaboration with the pensioners' organisation SPF Seniorerna to gain insights into how older people themselves experience a late divorce, what changes they have made, and what support they feel they need. The project is expected to generate new knowledge about which groups face the greatest financial risk in the event of a late-life divorce, how and to what extent welfare systems protect them, and whether prenuptial agreements serve as a financial safeguard or instead reinforce inequality.

ONGOING RESEARCH

The Private Regulation of Marriage: Prevalence, Content, and Selection into Marital Agreements in Sweden

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI) and Anna Nordén (JIBS)

Marriage shapes how couples allocate work, accumulate assets, and insure against risk. Family law provides default rules that redistribute economic risk between spouses, promoting economic security and gender equality. Yet an increasing share of this redistribution is governed by private contract: the use of marital agreements—which allow couples to opt out of default property regimes—has grown across advanced economies. Despite their growing relevance, marital agreements remain largely absent from empirical research. This paper fills this gap using a unique administrative database that covers the universe of marital agreements registered in Sweden since 1970 and is linked to population-wide registers. We document the prevalence and evolution of marital agreements over time, analyze selection into contracting, and examine the factors that drive couples' choices of property regime. We further explore whether observed patterns are consistent with motivations such as asset protection, specialization, or precaution against divorce risk. By making marital agreements observable at the population scale for the first time, this paper establishes essential descriptive foundations for assessing whether default marital property rules effectively serve those they are designed to protect.

Yours, Mine, or Ours? Marital Property Regimes and Within-Couple Gender Inequality

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI), Anna Nordén (JIBS), and Dmitry Petrov (Universidad de Alcalá)

How do property rights within marriage shape gender inequality between spouses? This paper examines how marital property regimes affect within-couple gaps in labor market outcomes, wealth, fertility, and relationship stability, focusing on how asset integration shapes the distribution of economic costs and gains from marriage. We exploit regional variation in default property regimes within Spain: while most regions apply the community of property, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands default to separation of property — an institutional difference that generates variation in intra-marital insurance and financial autonomy. Using rich Spanish administrative register data covering 2016–2022, we trace how within-couple gaps in earnings, employment, savings, and wealth evolve around marriage and divorce. An event-study difference-in-differences design allows us to decompose the extent to which the within-couple gender gap is shaped by the property regime. We further examine heterogeneity by assortative mating and pre-marriage earnings gaps, and use cohabiting couples — who face uniform property rules across regions — as a placebo group.

The Role of Marital Agreements in Shaping Intrahousehold Gender Inequality

Using a unique dataset of all marital agreement in Sweden for more than sixty years, we study how private contracting shapes within-couple gender inequality, tracing its consequences for individual economic outcomes — including income, assets, and labour supply — both during marriage and at divorce. By making the property regime inside the household empirically observable, we assess the extent to which private contracting reproduces or reinforces socio-economic gender gaps.

The Family Firm? On Firm Ownership and Marital Agreements 

We study how firm ownership intersects with marital contracting, asking whether men and women who own businesses differ systematically in whether and how they protect those assets through marital agreements. We also exploit policy reforms that shifted incentives away from salary withdrawal toward retained firm ownership, using this variation to identify how changes in the value of firm assets affect contracting behaviour.

Keeping it within the Family: Assets, Inheritance, and Marital Agreements 

We examine how the prospect of inheriting family wealth shapes both the decision to write a marital agreement and its content, highlighting how couples use private contracting to protect assets intended to remain within a family line.

RECENT WORKING PAPERS

Who Becomes a Father? The Rising Importance of Non-Cognitive Ability

Joint with Annee Boschini (SOFI)

Fathers But not Caregivers

Joint with Anne Boschini (SOFI)) and Malin Tallås Ahlzén (IFAU). Swedish report