That living conditions differ between urban and rural areas is often taken for granted. But what does it look like when we explore more manifest indicators of social exclusion and marginalization? Are these problems present also in rural areas? And if so, does the character of such problems...

Long term take-up of means-tested social assistance benefits increased rapidly in Sweden during the economic downturn of the 1990s and is at present established at levels well beyond those we saw before the crisis. In previous analyses of long term social assistance recipients the group has been...

Research has consistently shown that poverty and economic hardship have negative consequences for children. Few studies, however, have examined whether these consequences persists into adulthood. In the present paper we broaden the focus and analyse how living conditions during childhood and...

The Nordic countries share many features as far as welfare state and labour market institutions are concerned. However, the upper secondary school systems differ significantly in how the vocational tracks are organized. In Denmark and Norway vocational tracks are dual, i.e. they combine school...

This paper has two purposes: the first is to give an introduction to and an analysis of the most important concepts for describing social disadvantage in contemporary Sweden – poverty, social exclusion and the concept “utanförskap”. The latter is difficult to give a proper English...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The primary purpose is to try and explain both the temporal and the spatial variation of poverty rates in terms of unemployment insurance indicators and structural/sociodemographic factors. Secondly, the paper aims to test the 'convergence hypothesis' of the...