The Swedish welfare state

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The Swedish welfare state

• and how it all began!

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About the lecture

• The Swedish history in 2 hours
• 1870-2007
• The last 100 years in a planners view
• From developing to developed
• From emigration to immigration
• Compare
• With other countries
• What is development?

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Sweden 1870

• Agricultural
• Yeomanry (farmers owning their own land)
• Bad infrastructure
• 1870 the industry sectors share of GNP for the
  first time bigger than the agricultural sector
• The development started in the agricultural sector

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Advantage Sweden 1870

• Primary resources
• Forest
• Iron ore
• Energy
• The geographical location
• Small population
• Institutions partly a heritage from the 17th
  century and the Swedish empire. Compare Portugal
• But it all started with oats!

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Changes

• Dynamics
• Stability
• Physical conditions

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Stability

• Everything changes but are still the same
• Population stability
• The border between Norrland and the rest
• The relation between forest and cultivated land
  is the same
• The central agricultural regions are intact
• The small scale farming is killed
• The capitalisation and proletarisation of the
  agricultural sector

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The agricultural Land in Sweden
1560. Stability!
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Density inh/km2 1830

• Sparsely then still sparsely
• Centrum?

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inh/km2 1880 och 1930
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The agricultural revolution

• Land reforms
• Storskifte
• Enskifte
• Laga skifte
• Rationalisation
• Demand driven?
• Justice

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The booms

• The Oats Boom
• 1870 oats was cultivated on 75 of the arable
  land
• Swedish farmers were the main supplier of oat to
  the English horses
• Export-incomes
• Mono-cultivation

• The timber Boom
• Ruthless exploitation
• A huge demand in England
• The core ? Norway ? Sweden ? Finland ? Russia
• British investments, traders and forest companies
  like the Dickson brothers

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From here

• Industrialisation
• Swedish inventions ? Swedish companies
• Light houses ? AGA
• Tools (adjustable spanner) ? BACHO
• Ball bearing ? SKF
• Safety matches ? Swedish Match
• Milk separator ? Alfa Laval ? Tetra Pak
• Cars ? Volvo, SAAB
• Aircraft ? SAAB
• Pneumatic drill ? Atlas Copco
• Pulp, paper, forest products ? SCA, Stora Enzo,
• Steel ? SSAB
• In the beginning of the 20th century ? global
  free trade
• Swedish companies went abroad
• And the journey starts

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Welfare 1900

• Family-based
• No democracy
• No labour unions
• Long working days
• 6 or 7 days a week
• No public health care
• Still rather high mortality
• Child-work
• Poor working conditions
• Poor environmental conditions

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The industries
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Dev

• About 1909 ? the first environmental legislation
• Urban regulations started earlier (1874), safety,
  health, sanity
• Labour rights
• General strike 1909
• Universal suffrage (for women 1921)
• Holiday ? international convention 1935. In
  Sweden 2 weeks paid vacation 1938, 3 weeks 1951,
  4 weeks 1963 and 5 weeks 1977.

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The population

• High mortality (Spanish flue)
• Emigration ? 1929
• Low fertility during the 1930th
• Myrdal-couples The population crises (kris i
  befolkningsfrågan)

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(No Transcript)
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Welfare and crisis

• Child benefit
• Public health care
• Schools
• Dentists
• Public Child care (kindergarten)

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All this public, how could it be done?

• The third path (el sendero luminoso)
• Taxes, strong public sector, political consensus
  regarding the welfare society.
• A (healthy) alliance between the public sector
  and firm business world (multinational Swedish
  firms)

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Like thisthe social democratic economic post-war
program

• Based on John Maynard Keynes and his ideas.
• The great depression 1929
• The state as an economic actor
• How the deal with the national economy in
  depressions and booms

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Boom and depression

• Depression
• Unemployment
• Demand decreases
• More unemployment
• The key is the demand!

• Boom
• High demand
• Lack of labour force
• Prices goes up
• Inflation
• Speculation
• Crash!

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Keynes and booms/depression

• Depression
• Unemployment
• Public financed work
• Public investments in infrastructure etc
• To maintain the demand in the society
• If the state is out of money ? loans on the
  international market.

• Boom
• Restrictive public sector
• Restrictive finance policy
• Control the salary development.

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Post-war program (in Sweden)

• 1944
• Expected depression ? never occur
• Long boom 1945-1973
• A Swedish success story
• Sweden made huge profits during the war.
• Sweden was never attacked or bombed

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Post-war program

• 27 themes
• Goals
• Full employment
• Fair income distribution and improved standard of
  living
• Higher efficiency and more democracy in the trade
  and industry sector
• Based on Keynes
• Labour union economists Bertil Rehn and Rudolf
  Meidner

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The Phillips curve
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Four important goals

• Restrictive demand policy
• Selective employment policy
• Joint responsibility pay agreement
• Mobility-supporting activities

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Post-war planning

• Four distinct periods
• I 1945-1970
• Infrastructure
• Residential production
• Economic growth (up in the sky) Compare Japan and
  the NIC-countries
• 1970-1980
• Crises
• 1980-1987
• Environment
• Uncertainty
• New strategies
• 1987
• Global, global, global
• Same doomsdays forecasts
• New regulations
• The local level

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Post-war planning

• Theses
• Land-use planning ? comprehensive planning
• Centralized planning ? decentralized planning
• Determinative planning methods ? Explorative
  planning methods

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Economic growth 1945 -1970

• Planning for urban expansion
• Background ? the rapid urbanisation
• Urban pop 1940 56
• Urban pop 1970 81
• Caused by
• Boom
• Economic restructuring
• Labour-market policy
• Immigration

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Plan- and building act of 1947

• Forerunner to the modern plan- and building act
  1987
• General plan
• Land-use overview
• Detailed plan
• Prevent private land speculation
• The aim was to control the urban growth

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Centralized residential building activities

• 5-year building program
• Financially supported by the government
• ?result? ? Better, but
• Still lack of residential facilities
• Population growth
• Immigration
• Urbanisation
• Residential norms
• ?????

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The one million dwelling programme

• One million dwellings in 10 years (1965 -1974)
• Social housing
• Intensive exploitation
• Social environment
• Physical environment
• Local services

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Social science meets architecture

• The growth of the welfare society
• New demands and new kinds of planning requires
  new kinds of planners
• The rational planning is criticized.
  Municipalities can not act as actors with
  long-term targets. They are institutions which
  has to deal with planning conflicts
• From intuitive design to rational planning to
  market demands

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The growth of the public sector

• Big society
• Private life and family matters are being
  institutionalized
• Health care, child care, elderly care, disabled
  people care, integration care, the Swedish model
  care
• One supplier ? the public sector

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Stagnation and turbulence 1970-1980

• The oil crises
• Structural crises
• Unemployment (3-4) (Considered as very high)
• Political uncertainty
• Planning for economic expansion become
  administration planning

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The municipality reform

• From 200 000 elected to 50 000 elected
• A democratic reform?
• Who knows a politician today?

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The suburbs

• The problem of building to much in a short period
  of time
• Isolation
• Distance to city-centre
• Surplus
• Segregation
• Physical and social environment

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City centre reconstruction

• Heavily criticized
• The European cities were bombed, destroyed and
  rebuilt
• The Swedish towns were planned to ashes
  reconstructed and uglyfied
• Epa-bunker, Domus-bunker etc

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Environmental planning

• A part of the new legislation of 1987 (1999).
• Interplay between the national, regional and
  local levels

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Policy and planning

• After 44 years of social-democratic (Labour)
  governments Sweden got a liberal government 1976
• And?
• No noticeable changes!

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Methods

• From how to do to how to afford to do what to do
• From general plan to comprehensive plan
• From a target-orientated planning to a
  resource-orientated planning

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What about the welfare

• Recently
• The global economy
• Welfare costs?
• Welfare consensus
• Welfare suppliers, public or private sector
• The idea of welfare and justice