1

Previous section "Introduction  to a European Typology of Values"

 

SWEDEN


Background

Sweden industrialized late — starting 100 years behind England — but rapidly. Recent decades has seen an enormous expansion of the service sector, which in Sweden mostly means government-run establishments for the care of the old, the sick, and the young. The country has a small and homogeneous population of 8 millions. The economically active population in 1981 divides into the following groups:
Agriculture 5%
Industry, construction, and trade
entrepreneurs
employees
9
45
Service
education/welfare
other
27
14

During the post-war period the most encompassing structural changes and rationalizations were made, not in industry but in agriculture. To reduce the farming population from 20 to 5 percent took a heavy toll in terms of human suffering. This experience created a breeding grand for anti-industrial values of more old-fashioned kind.

The recent driving forces of value change have been the rise of service occupations in which one must deal with people (health, education, and welfare) and the prolonged education which have accustomed the new generation to inner-directed values, i e anti-industrial values of a more modern kind.

Systematic welfare measures turned Sweden into Europe’s most thorough welfare state in the late 50s. It is relatively easy for Europeans to imagine Swedish welfare: it is just a decade or so older, often a little more thorough and organized. To convey an idea to Americans about Swedish

1