The Swedish health care system is commonly characterized as a national health-service (or Beveridge) model ( Freeman, 2000 ; Blank and Burau, 2004 ). It is certainly both financed by taxes and organized as a government responsibility, but it has developed over time as a decentralized rather than...

In the 1990s, individuals aged 18–64 were eligible for disability insurance, if their work capacity was reduced by at least 25 percent (50 percent before 1993). In the beginning of the period, before 1991, disability insurance could also be granted for labor market reasons (i.e., if unemployed...

There are many factors that may explain the number of spells and the number of days of absence from work reported as due to sickness. Health problems seem to be the most natural candidate to include among the explanatory factors, but individual health behavior could enter the scene in several...

As summarized in our introductory Chapter 1, the trend toward ever-healthier elderly seems to have been broken (Figures 8 and 9). The share of young and middle-aged Swedish men and women, reporting very good or good health status to the Survey of Living Conditions, started to decline already in...