Sweden: The Impact of Policy and Labour Market Transformation

Abstract

The discussion of in-work poverty (IWP) can be related to two interlinked perspectives: the policy perspective and the labour market perspective. The policy perspective relates to the ‘making work pay’ and ‘workfare’ agenda. This agenda has emphasized the link between poverty and unemployment and the fight against poverty has been formulated as a fight against unemployment. However, researchers and others (Hong and Wernet, 2007; Meyers and Lee, 2003; Nightingale and Fix, 2004; Dickerson, 1999) have warned and tried to show that these kinds of policies, if not carefully implemented, risk transforming unemployed poor into working poor. If, for example, job growth is provided at the expense of an individual’s possibility to receive public benefits, the risk is that a number of people will exchange poverty based on social welfare payments for the low-paid labour market, thus ending up among the working poor.