A prime objective for welfare state activities is to take action to enhance population health and decrease mortality risks. Poverty has for several centuries been seen as a key social risk factor in these respects. Consequently, the fight against poverty has historically been at the forefront of...

We study the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) against COVID- 19 on the allocation of scarce resources in the hospital sector in Scandinavia. Denmark and Norway imposed strict NPIs, but Sweden followed an extraordinarily lenient approach. We use an event study to compare...

What accounts for Sweden’s high COVID death rate among the Nordics? One factor could be Sweden’s lighter lockdown. But we suggest 15 other possible factors. Most significant are:(1) the “dry-tinder” situation in Sweden (we suggest that this factor alone accounts for 25 to 50% of Sweden's...