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Dec 15, 2008: "One hundred and thirty days. That's how much time each year many Swedish white-collar workers aren't working at the office according to a new calculation made by The Local and confirmed by Swedish academics." (Published in The Local, Sweden's News in English.)
Mar 2006: A comment found on the net: "I lived in Sweden for 4 years and I found it a lot safer than Ireland."
Between Norway and Finland. Slightly larger than California. Capital: Stockholm.
Sweden is a constitutional monarchy, its official title: the Kingdom of Sweden. It reigning monarch since 1973 is Carl XVI Gustaf.
Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1995. It has not been a member of NATO.
Sweden passed a law on January 1, 1999, against anyone paying for sex. The law was inserted into the criminal code on April 1, 2005. Convictions bring a fine or a maximum prison sentence of six months. By March, 2008, there have been about 500 convictions but no one sent to prison. sentences.
The assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 is unsolved and leaves the Swedish people disturbed. Palme is believed to have been hated by fascists, anticommunists, including some in the United States, and by weapons dealers. The latest (March 2006), and most credible theory, is that the assassin was a hit man for someone with an interest in illegal arms sales from Sweden to Iran.
Sweden's foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was attacked on September 10, 2003 and died on September 11, 2003, further shaking the sense of security and freedom that Swedes have felt. The assassin is believed to be Miljailo Mijailovic, the son of Serbian immigrants. He is reported to have freely confessed. He is said to have been released from a mental institution five days before the assassination and to have been angered by Lindh's support for the military campaign against Serbia, led by the United States, in 1999. He is serving a life sentence.
Figures unless otherwise stated are from the CIA Factbook.
Factbook: "Aided by peace and neutrality for the whole of the 20th century, Sweden has achieved an enviable standard of living under a mixed system of high-tech capitalism and extensive welfare benefits. It has a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labor force."
Estimated per capita GDP:
2008 $38,500 (8th highest in Europe, just behind conservative Austria)
2007 $38,300
2005 $37,400
GDP annual growth rate:
2008: 0.7%
2007: 2.7%
2006: 37,400
Sweden's welfare system has been described as helping economic stability. Economies deteriorate when wealth is hoarded by a few, hidden away or sent abroad, and others have too little to spend. Welfare, they say, helps keep the money circulating. A few in Sweden have complained that it also reduces incentive.
Sweden experienced a minor economic downturn as recent as the mid-1990s. Its unemployment rate climbed to more than 8 percent - four times higher than what it had been in the 1980s. The economy recovered in the late 1990s.
Swedes are said to report in sick more often than other European workers.
Unemployment rate estimated for 2008: 6.4%.
The value of Sweden's exports has been well above its imports. For 2005: $126 versus 104.4 billion.
Gender Gap: The World Economic Forum lists Sweden as leading the world in the elimination of a gender gap.
With Denmark, the Swedes rank high in the industrialized world in equality of wealth. The wealthiest 10 percent in Sweden consumes 20.1 percent, the lowest 10 percent consume 3.7 percent - not exactly a communal sharing of wealth, but something other than letting the wealthy get wealthy faster than others.
Sweden has the lowest percentage of children living in poverty.
According to a BBC News report on 22 May 2005, Sweden has been described as the country "with the world's smallest economic divide" between the sexes.
For a single worker without children, in the year 2001, including contributions to Social Security, a Swede earning an average wage paid 48.6 percent of income. In the U.S. this was 30 percent, in Australia 23.1 percent, in Belgium 55.6 percent.
The Swedes could vote out of office those who maintain their tax rate at a high level. That they do not means that an overwhelming majority believes that costly programs are worth the money.
In 2003, Sweden spent $191.48 per capita on foreign aid, compared to $23.76 for the United States.
Deaths 10.24. Births 10.15
Childhood death from accidents is among the lowest in the world.
Estimated for July 2008: 9.05 million. Growth rate: 0.157 percent, compared to 0.883 for the United States. Sweden Density in 2005: 22 persons per square kilometer.
Those today considered Swedish are diminishing in number in Sweden at about 10,000 per year, due to low fertility rates. If this continues, they will be replaced in a few hundred years, by a new mix of peoples.
More arriving than leaving. A net gain of 1.66 persons per 1,000 population, holding steady since 2005, when it was 1.67.
Infant mortality estimated for 2008: 2.75, down from 2.76 in 2007 and 2.77 in 2005 (deaths before the age of one year, per 1,000 live births) - second only to Singapore's 2.3 deaths.
Average life expectancy at birth estimated for 2008: 80.74 years.
Living with HIV/AIDS, ages 15 to 49: 0.1 percent (2001). HIV deaths in 2003: less than 100.
The Swedish government offers one national health insurance program that covers all citizens. Patients pay a fee for consultations and prescription medications. The total spending on health care per person for a single year has been $2,145, a little over half that spent per person in the United States for the year 1999 - $4,271. France in 1999 spent $2,288 per person, Germany $2,697.
The state pays for dental care, partially for those over 19 years of age and free for those under 19. About half of all dentists in Sweden work for government dental services. Children also receive free eye checkups and, if needed, glasses.
Maternity and paternity leave are offered. Each day that a working person is off the job because of illness or to care for a sick child, he or she receives 80 percent of their lost income. Parents can take as many as 60 days as paid leave to care for an ill child under age 12. Fathers take about 41 percent of this leave. Working grandparents may do the same. Parents can also take as many as five days per year to attend a child's school or other needs not related to sickness.
For years in Sweden junk food advertising has been banned from children's television programs.
From June 1, 2005 all restaurants, bars and cafes have been smoke-free.
In 2004, almost 12 percent of Sweden's population is foreign born. About 7 percent of them are non-Europeans, mostly non-white. Sweden's third largest city, Malmo (on the Baltic Sea 30 kilometers east of Copenhagen, Denmark) is 40 percent foreign born. Some are Serbs, some from Iran or Iraq, and some from sub-Saharan Africa.
In Sweden's 2002 elections, an anti-immigrant party, Sweden Democrats(Sverigedemokraterna) received 1.4 percent of the vote.
Families with only one parent at home are 3 percent, compared to 11 percent for Canada, 10 percent for Britain and 9 percent for the U.S., Finland, Norway and Ireland. Teenage out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion rates are also low.
Sweden has cut its own airborne pollutant productions by about half since 1985. Acid rain caused by sulfur dioxide has declined in recent years. (2005) Much of this rain has origins from outside Sweden. As elsewhere in Europe's far north, Sweden is still troubled by acid rain, which has spread mercury and killed its lakes.
Swedish road traffic is said to be the safest in the world. In Sweden, about 550 people die each year in traffic accidents. The United States has around 2.5 times as many death from traffic accidents per capita. The U.S. has only 1.26 times as many cars per capita, but no figure is available on the difference between the amount of miles driven.
To encourage people out of their cars, Swedish municipalities have been upgrading their bicycle routes and introducing new routes.
Sweden is second, behind Iceland, in the number of Nobel laureates per capita - 3.37 per million compared to 0.92 million for the United States.
Sweden ranks fifth in the number of medals won Olympic summer games - before the 2004 games. Per capita it is second, just behind Finland.
The happiness survey, described at Nationmaster.com, has the people of Sweden third in the world, behind Iceland and the Netherlands.
The Suicide rate in close to that of the U.S. but less than Russia. Russia in 2002 had 69.3 suicides per 100,000 people. The United States in 2001 had 10.4. In Sweden, suicides have been declining, from a high of 22.3 per 100,000 in 1970 to 13.4 in 2001. In both the U.S. and Sweden a steep rise occurs in males by age 75 - 60.9 in the U.S. and 42.2 in Sweden. Is this the result of better health care for older people in Sweden? Maybe not. Maybe the Swedes take better care of themselves and so are in better shape in old age. Maybe a little of both. (These figures are from the World Health Organization)
Ranks 5th in the Economist Magazine's 2005 Quality-of-Life index.
SOURCES:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/tax/basics/9196.asp
http://www.childpolicyintl.org/countries/sweden.html
Copyright © 2008 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.