Introduction

When looking at changes in health in Sweden during the past four decades it is important to bear in mind that a number of social and economic conditions have changed during the same period. The development of the Swedish (and Nordic) welfare state model has been summarised as “coming late – catching up” (Kangas and Palme, 2005), and this may also apply to the period after 1965. When the description starts in the late 1960s Sweden was not a country free from social injustice or social conflict – if indeed it ever was. In fact, the data we use – the Swedish Level-of-Living Surveys (LNU) – was in part the result of a discussion concerning the state of things in Sweden. When the Social Democrats launched their vision of a welfare state in the late 1920s under the label the ‘people's home’ (folkhemmet), it was declared that this would involve a “… decomposing of all social and economical barriers, that now divides citizens into privileged and neglected, into ruling and dependent, into rich and poor, propertied classes and impoverished, plunderers and the plundered” (“…nedbrytandet av alla sociala och ekonomiska skrankor, som nu skilja medborgarna i priviligerade och tillbakasatta, i härskande och beroende, i rika och fattiga, besuttne och utarmade, plundrare och utplundrade”) (from a speech given in the Swedish Parliament in 1928 by Per Albin Hansson, MP, chairman of the Social Democratic Party and later Prime Minister).

Despite a number of large welfare reforms during the 1930s, and in particular during the postwar era, the 1960s was a period when ‘uncomplaining poverty’ was discussed. The unfinished welfare was an influential book (Inghe and Inghe, 1967) that described and discussed social problems such as poor housing and poor working conditions as well as groups that were excluded or left behind in the welfare development, including lone mothers, large families and low-income earners. Also a number of governmental committees were set up during this time to investigate social problems and to suggest reforms, including costs for dental care, medical drugs, pensions, unemployment benefits and family support.

Special attention was devoted to poverty and low-income earners, and a low-income committee was set up in 1965. As part of its work this committee financed the first LNU in 1968, in which around 6,000 people aged 15-75 were interviewed about their living conditions.