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Still Awaiting the Storm? The Swedish Welfare State After the Latest Crisis

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Challenges to European Welfare Systems

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges to the Swedish welfare state after the credit crunch of 2008 focusing on several major challenges: the government’s reaction to the fiscal and economic crisis and its outcomes, the (re)balance of welfare policies addressing risks and opportunities. While the situation is almost excellent from a purely fiscal point of view, the outstanding private debt, unemployment, especially among youth, pressures on the pension, health and education systems are prominent concerns. They have led to the revitalization of the social investment paradigm, strict budgetary policies, increased number of welfare-to-work programmes and focus on using tax reductions as a means of stimulating the labour market. In this context, the main demographic concerns and social integration have come to the fore to an unprecedented extent.

For a decade Sweden could plausibly claim to be Europe’s most successful economy […] figures not only outshine Britain and the euro zone; they also eclipse America. The government’s achievements go deeper still. It has overturned Sweden’s old image as a high-tax, high-spending Socialist nirvana.

(Economist September 13–19, 2014)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, Linnaeus University, Kalmar and Vðxj­, Sweden

    Sven E. O. Hort

  2. School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden

    Lisa Kings & Zhanna Kravchenko

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  1. Sven E. O. Hort
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  2. Lisa Kings
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Correspondence to Sven E. O. Hort .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany

    Klaus Schubert

  2. Fac. de Ciencias Políticas y Sociol, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Paloma de Villota

  3. Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany

    Johanna Kuhlmann

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Hort, S.E.O., Kings, L., Kravchenko, Z. (2016). Still Awaiting the Storm? The Swedish Welfare State After the Latest Crisis. In: Schubert, K., de Villota, P., Kuhlmann, J. (eds) Challenges to European Welfare Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07680-5_29

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