The Social Programs of Sweden A Search for Security in a Free Society

The Social Programs of Sweden was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In his forward to this book, Marquis Childs, author of the classic work Sweden: The Middle Way,comments: "There has been a great deal of emotional writing about the effort of the labor government in Stockholm to regulate capitalism and provide a decent standard of living for every citizen. Much of this emotional writing has come from those who for one reason or another have sought to discredit the Swedish experiment ... The net result of much of this highly colored writing has been to ignore the real contribution that Sweden has made in a half dozen fields and particularly in the fields of social security and health. But now comes an author ideally equipped to appraise this contribution by reason of his background. This is the great virtue of this book. It is a careful and thorough examination of Sweden's achievement by a specialist familiar with our own social security, public health and welfare systems ... No subsequent appraisal of what Sweden has done can be made henceforth without this basic work."

The author traces the development of the Swedish programs and provides detailed descriptions of the social security, health insurance, public health, and welfare programs, with case examples. He evaluates and compares the programs with their American counterparts, and, in conclusion, considers the effects of the Swedish system on personal freedom. The work is based on extensive research done in Sweden.

Albert H. Rosenthal was a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico and professor of public administration at the University of Minnesota. He served for a number of years as regional director of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in Denver, and was the United Nations adviser in public administration to Ireland in 1954-65.