Health inequalities and welfare resources: Continuity and change in Sweden

Description

Foreword by Lisa Berkman, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University How welfare states influence population health and health inequalities has long been debated but less well tested by empirical research. This book presents new empirical evidence of the effects of Swedish welfare state structures and policies on the lives of Swedish citizens. The discussion, analysis and innovative theoretical approaches developed in the book have implications for health research and policy beyond Scandinavian borders. Drawing on a rich source of longitudinal data, the Swedish Level of Living Surveys (LNU), and other data, the authors shed light on a number of pertinent issues in health inequality research while at the same time showing how health inequalities have evolved in Sweden over several decades. Topics covered include how structural conditions relating to family, socio-economic conditions and the welfare state are important in producing health inequalities; how health inequalities change over the lifecourse and the impact of environment on health inequalities - at home, at school, in the workplace. Health inequalities and welfare resources will be invaluable to researchers, students and practitioners in sociology, social epidemiology, public health and social policy interested in the interplay between society and health.

Johan Fritzell is Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Health Equity Studies,Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet. He has published extensively on the determinants and distribution of welfare in Sweden, as well as comparative income distribution and poverty studies. Olle Lundberg is Professor of Health Equity Studies at the Centre for Health Equity Studies, Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet. He has conducted research on health inequalities, child and adult health, and the links between income and health.

"These complex findings and issues are clearly presented and discussed, and we learn much about the social determinants of health and levels of health inequalities in Sweden. ... there are rich pickings, plenty of food for thought and a lot to digest in this book; as a comprehensive and very capable investigation of the social determinants of health in Sweden it makes an important contribution to health inequalities research." International Journal of Epidemiology "The book makes an original and important contribution to the field. It interrogates a rich dataset relating to a society in which there is intense international interest using perspectives at the cutting-edge of health inequalities research." Hilary Graham, Professor of Health Sciences, University of York, UK