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Sweden

Institute:

The Department of Sociology at Umeå University was created in 1966. It has been growing continuously over the years and employs now 65 people and teaches about 500 undergraduate students. As much as 70% of the annual budget is however related to research and the department has very successful research teams working in a number of areas.

Two of the main research programmes has a direct bearing on HWF:

Comparative Social Policy:This research programme includes studies of welfare models and changes in social policies in recent years. The programme also covers an extensive survey of poverty in Sweden with comparative data for some other European Nations and a Nordic comparative study of adjustments of social policy in the 1980s and 1990s.

Area:
449,964 sq. km
Capital: Stockholm (711,119)
Population:
8.8 million
Member of EU since 1995

Another major area within this field of research is to analyse the effects of changes in income distribution and social policy on people's living conditions. For this purpose an extensive survey of poverty in Sweden was conducted in the beginning of the 1990s and more recently Statistic Sweden's annual survey of living conditions has been used.

Labour Markets and Working Life: As one of the major areas of research this programme is concerned with a range of problems concerning the labour market organisation, employment structure and work conditions. Particular emphasis is given to unemployment and changing conditions at work. A specific study is looking into gender aspects of labour market and welfare state. The programme is also dealing with long term sickness, disability retirement and vocational rehabilitation.

Contact:

Thomas Boje thomas.boje@soc.umu.se boje@ruc.dk	Mattias Strandh Mattias.Strandh@soc.umu.se
Address: Sociological Institute, University of Umea, S-90187 Umea Sweden	T: +46 90 786 5984 F :+46 90 786 6694