Abstract
An important feature of the Swedish housing system is universalism, meaning that housing provision should encompass broad income groups and thus not only be directed towards poor households. Considering the recent decades of marketization and liberalisation of the Swedish housing system, concerns have been raised whether universalism remains as a key feature of the Swedish housing system. The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of processes of residualisation in Sweden. This is a process whereby the public housing sector is becoming dominated by low income households. To describe, analyse and understand processes of residualisation in Sweden and across regions, I use a novel Index of Residualisation and longitudinal register data covering the period 1993–2012. The results indicate that the rental sector as a whole is undergoing a process of residualisation, but that there are clear variations in the magnitude of residualisation across regions. The process of residualisation is most pronounced in sparsely populated regions. The relative size of the public rental sector is a key factor to consider in order to understand the diverging trends. Regions with smaller rental sectors are associated with higher levels of residualisation, indicating that public housing may have the function of social housing in these regions.
Highlights
The Swedish welfare state has long been characterized as the role model of Esping-Andersen’s social democratic welfare state regime
In 1993, eight percent of the public housing tenants belonged to the richest fifth of the population, while in 2012, five percent of the public housing tenants were in the same quintile
The aim of this paper was to improve our understanding of processes of residualisation within and across Sweden 1993–2012, a period where “[D]eregulation and liberalization have fundamentally changed the special features on the Swedish housing market” (Holmqvist and Turner 2014:237)
Summary
The Swedish welfare state has long been characterized as the role model of Esping-Andersen’s social democratic welfare state regime. Scholars studying countries following a different pathway in how welfare state provides for housing, e.g. selective models where welfare services are provided only for the poor through means testing, have made us aware of a process called residualisation (Murie 1997b, 1983, 1991; Forrest and Murie 1983, [1988]2010). This is a process “whereby public housing [and other social housing] moves towards a position in which it provides only a ‘safety net’ for those who for reasons of poverty, age or infirmity cannot obtain suitable accommodation in the private sector” (Malpass and Murie 1982:174). The reason for such processes to occur are manifold and interlinked. Pearce and Vine (2014) summarize that tenure restructuring, i.e. increasing home-ownership at the expense of a shrinking rental sector, economic restructuring and retrenchment of governmental support to the housing sector are key factors that needs to be taken into account to understand processes of residualisation
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