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Inequality in the welfare state? Local variation in care of the elderly - the case of Sweden
- Authors:
- TRYDEGARD Gun-Britt, THORSLUND Mats
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Social Welfare, 10(3), July 2001, pp.174-184.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
This article uses Sweden as an example to describe and analyse municipal variation in services and care for elderly people. Responsibility for these services lies with the municipalities. National statistical data on municipalities are analysed to map out the variations in old-age care; to study compensating factors in the care system: and to explore the connection with municipal structural and political conditions. The overall finding of the bivariate analyses was that most relations with structure and policy were weak or non-existent. The final multivariate model explained only 15% of the variance. The large differences between municipalities makes it more appropriate to talk about a multitude of 'welfare municipalities' rather than one single welfare state. The article concludes that this municipal disparity constitutes a greater threat to the principle of equality in care of the elderly than gender and socio-economic differences.
One uniform welfare state or a multitude of welfare municipalities? The evolution of local variation in Swedish elder care
- Authors:
- TRYDEGARD Gun-Britt, THORSLUND Mats
- Journal article citation:
- Social Policy and Administration, 44(4), August 2010, pp.495-511.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
The Nordic welfare states, including Sweden, have an inbuilt dilemma between 2 main principles: universalism and local autonomy. The concept of `welfare municipalities' has been used to characterise the social policy construction of independent local authorities implementing national welfare policies. This article studies the evolution of the balance between universal, centralised versus local, decentralised principles in Swedish welfare services, using elder care as a case. It follows up previous studies on the extensive diversity and the local path dependency in the distribution of elder-care services in Sweden. A predominant impression is that the pattern has changed in many aspects during the first decade of the new millennium, and in a complex way. The coverage of home help and residential care has become less generous, a sign of weaker universalism. On the other hand, the decentralisation tendencies have decreased, the earlier reported geographical disparity appears to have been reduced and the municipalities are increasingly adjusting to the national average. Also, the earlier strong local path dependency has faded out and therefore the concepts `welfare municipality' and `local social policy' appear to be less accurate than heretofore when describing the Swedish model of elder care.