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It is often assumed in housing and urban studies scholarship that the roots of Sweden's present housing discontents are to be found in a neoliberal 'system switch' following the early-1990s banking crisis. This paper offers a different account, identifying and expounding how insuperable contradictions in Sweden's complex of housing production, distribution and finance, from the 1970s onward, led to a marked deterioration in its much-lauded housing model. Advancing a historical institutionalist framework, the paper seeks to historically couch the processes and outcomes commonly associated with the contemporary neoliberal era and position them more concretely in relation to actors and their social relations through time. Using a range of data pertaining to housing finance, subsidies, house prices and building output, as part of a mixed-methods analysis, the paper explores how macroeconomic factors, mediated by interactions between the state and sectoral cleavages, influence urban and regional development aspects. The paper's conceptual and methodological relevance to housing and urban studies scholarship thus extends beyond Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How the duration of housing allowance spells varies with the generosity of the housing allowance system carries important policy implications. In 1997, the Swedish housing allowance system implemented a drastic reform which substantially affected claimants who were couples with children in terms of their financial incentives to utilise housing allowance benefits. However, at the same time, the 1997 reform largely left single-parent claimants unaffected. Exploiting the quasi-experimental feature of this reform, this paper analyses the impacts of benefit shrinkage on couple-with-children recipients' exit hazards using the DD (difference-in-difference) estimation strategy. Careful attention is given to measuring interaction effects appropriately in non-linear models. The findings in this paper suggest that the 1997 reform led to a sharp increase in the leaving speed of the recipients in the `couples with children' category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a number of welfare reforms have been introduced in the UK by Conservative-led governments. The most high profile of these is Universal Credit (UC), which is currently being rolled out across the country. A key feature of UC is a change in the way the income-related housing allowance for social housing tenants (Housing Benefit) is administered, as under UC, it is paid directly to tenants (direct payment), who are responsible for paying their rent. This represents a step change for them as for more than 30 years landlord payment has been the norm in the UK. There has been little research into direct payment. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by presenting the key findings of an initiative designed to trial direct payment. It finds that many tenants experienced difficulties on direct payment. Reflecting this, landlords' arrears rose markedly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swedish housing policy was dramatically changed during the 1990s. A traditional formally tenure-neutral and generous subsidy system has been replaced by much lower levels of assistance, more directed at lower-income households and depressed areas. This paper sets the Swedish policy in an international context as part of a much more general pattern of reduced and rebalanced expenditures associated with liberalisation and the transfer of risk. The paper then addresses the direct and indirect impacts of the Swedish 'grand restructuring', concentrating on the extent of the cutbacks; rents and prices; levels of output; and the potential for increased segregation. The evidence suggests that the policy changes, together with their effect on expectations, significantly modified the housing system. They reduced demand for new building, particularly in less-pressured areas; increased vacancies, especially in the social sector; transferred risk to both the social and private sectors; and increased outcome differentials between the well-off and those with fewer resources—both in terms of individuals and areas. The analysis presented here provides evidence against which the Swedish policy can begin to be evaluated. It also suggests lessons for other industrialised economies that are addressing similar issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate how labor force participation among married women in Sweden responded to changing work incentives implied by a reform in the tax and transfer system in 1997. Using rich, population‐wide, administrative data, we estimate an average participation elasticity of 0.13, thereby adding to the scarce literature estimating participation elasticities using quasi‐experimental methods. We also highlight that estimated extensive margin responses necessarily are local to the observed equilibrium. Among low‐income earners, elasticities are twice as large in the group with the lowest employment level, compared with the group with the highest employment level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the energy transition of the EU housing stock is now being intensified with the launch of the Renovation Wave, economic inequalities are increasing in many OECD countries, which has effects on housing-related inequalities and the demand of affordable housing. The Renovation Wave is thus an opportunity to improve housing quality for low-income households, but also entails risks for increased rents. In Sweden, the standard of housing is relatively high and energy poverty in multifamily housing is rare, meaning that there are limited social benefits to be achieved from extensive energy retrofitting; moreover, Sweden lacks a social housing sector, which limits protection of the worst-off residents. This paper thus explores whether the limited social benefits of the Renovation Wave weigh up against the risks that it entails for the worst-off in the Swedish context. This is done within a normative framework for just energy transitioning that is developed within the context of the Renovation Wave and increasing economic inequalities, consisting of four ordered principles: (1) The equal treatment principle; (2) The priority principle; (3) The efficiency principle; and (4) The principle of procedural fairness. Analysis showed that to be considered just according to our framework, the Swedish energy transition of housing should, in contradistinction to what is suggested in the Renovation Wave, limit the imposition of extensive energy retrofitting in low-income areas. Finally, having identified a mismatch between the most effective approaches in terms of energy savings and the most acceptable approaches in terms of social justice, we offer policy recommendations on how to bridge this mismatch in a Swedish context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]