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In this paper, we perform a latent class factor analysis of a panel that involves two waves of data from an annual survey of living conditions in Sweden that were gathered in the years 1994-1995 and 2002-2003. We follow the same 3,149 individuals over both waves, describing them by sex, age group, family type, nationality background, education level and socio-economic class. Further, since the welfare disadvantages included in the analysis are chronic unemployment, economic problems, health problems, experiences of threat or violence, crowded housing, lack of a close friend and sleeping problems, we also have data on exactly which welfare problems each individual in the data set suffers from. In the empirical analysis, latent class factor analysis provides us not only with information on which individual characteristics that are important in the accumulation of welfare problems, but also gives us information on which disadvantages in fact are accumulated. First, we find that welfare problems do cluster. Second, the welfare problems that most often appear at a factor level with several disadvantages are experiences of threat or violence and sleeping problems. Finally, being an immigrant and being single are individual characteristics that turn up most often in factor levels with problem accumulation, whereas there is no distinctive difference between the sexes. However, women seem to be more prone to suffer from experiences of threat or violence and sleeping problems, while men are more likely to suffer from lack of a close friend.

In this paper, we examine the risk of social exclusion among the Swedish population from a longitudinal perspective. In the empirical analysis, a person is considered socially excluded if he or she suffers from at least two of the following six welfare problems: chronic unemployment, economic problems, health problems, experiences of threat or violence, crowded housing and lack of interpersonal relationships. Our three main findings are as follows: There is no evidence that immigrants have been better integrated into Swedish society "over time" from the perspective of social exclusion risk. Instead, there are weak signs that their situation has become worse. Further, even though men are worse off than women as regards the odds for social exclusion, there are weak signs that their relative situation has improved "over time". Finally, compared to couples without children, there is clear evidence that the odds for social exclusion for singles with children have increased "over time" and that the odds for social exclusion for couples with children have decreased "over time". We can, therefore, conclude that among these groups, the inequality has increased "over time". To be able to make these conclusions, we have fitted several specifications of a logistic regression model with random effects for panel data to our data set.

We examined the occurrence and coexistence of externalising and internalising problem behaviour among Swedish boys and girls, and investigated whether there are differences in the accumulation of problems among adolescents with different behavioural, demographic and social characteristics. The results are discussed in the context of self-salience schemas. The source material comprised all ninth grade pupils in a province in central Sweden in 2008 (N = 3,095). First, girls were found to be more prone to experience internalising problem behaviour, whereas no sex differences were found regarding externalising problem behaviour. Second, multidimensional scaling maps indicated that, compared with boys, self-esteem and the Psycho Somatic Problem ( PSP) scale among girls more closely indicated externalising problem behaviour components, whereas anxiety was situated far from the other externalising problem behaviour indicators. Finally, linear regression analyses indicated family type as the primary explanatory background factor for externalising problem behaviour and economic hardship as the primary explanatory background factor for internalising problem behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]