Social Rights and Social Security: The Swedish Welfare State, 1900-2000

Sweden has become known as the prototype for the Social Democratic welfare state. Since around 1960, the modern Swedish social security system was built on a combination of universalism, i.e. that social rights encompassed all inhabitants and income security, guaranteeing the standard of living for those who for some reason could not continue to work. The social insurances were organized through the state, thereby minimizing market solutions. This article presents the road to the modern welfare state and the crisis it met during recent decades. The debate about modern social politics started in Sweden in the 1880s, inspired by Bismarck and the German social political discourse, but also by the important social problems in the late 19th century, with poverty, emigration, social and economic insecurity on one side, and urbanization, industrialization and the introduction of capitalistic wage labour on the other. In this period, the rural areas still dominated Sweden, as well as the other Nordic countries. A large proportion of the population – more than 50% – was still living in the countryside, and worked in agriculture, forestry, fishing, etc. For those who had a small farm or similar means of support, old-age pensions and other social insurances were less of a problem than they were for the urban working class. But the rural groups were taxpayers and played an important role in the political system and in the parliament. It was almost impossible to introduce state-financed systems in Sweden without giving benefits back to this large proportion of the taxpayers. Therefore, it was difficult to win political support for proposals, which were directed only towards special groups, such as poor persons, the working class or the industrial workers.