Social Capital and Health Inequality in the Social-Democratic Swedish Welfare State

Abstract

Previous chapters of this book have examined the relationship between social capital and health in a welfare state perspective by means of cross-national European comparisons. This chapter will, on the contrary, perform an in-depth analysis of social capital and health in the Swedish welfare state. There are at least two reasons for this. First, the Swedish welfare state is often considered one of the most universal and comprehensive welfare states of the post-war period (Bergh, 2004). Sweden may hence be considered a unique context for the study of social capital and health in a welfare state perspective. For instance, studying trends in social capital in Sweden might give a good indication of whether comprehensive welfare states influence social capital positively or negatively over longer time periods. Second, the unique data available in Sweden provide some advantages for the study of social capital and health. For instance, there are no cross-national European data materials that include repeated information on trends in social capital during longer time periods, as are available in Sweden. Moreover, Swedish data also include longitudinal information, which is necessary in order to examine the causal priorities between social capital and health.KeywordsSocial CapitalWelfare StateSocial ContactHealth InequalitySocial TrustThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.