How welfare shapes our future: Policies targeted at young children and their -effects over the full life course – a case study of southern Sweden, 1920 to the present day

The welfare state contributes greatly to improving wellbeing of the population and especially of the most vulnerable groups in society. This project is the first to study the effects of welfare developments targeted at mothers and young children – the institutionalization of childbirth in hospitals and child-care in day-care centres – on individuals’ wellbeing over the full life course. A life course perspective is central to understanding determinants of individuals’ outcomes, as conditions in early childhood shape health and cognitive ability which in turn affect wellbeing later in life.By using existing unique longitudinal micro-level data for the city of Landskrona and five rural parishes in southern Sweden from 1920 to the present day, the project contributes greatly to the scarce international literature on long-term effects of early childhood interventions on later-life outcomes. Digitizing and linking individual-level records of midwifery, hospital births and day-care enrolments allows precise identification of children born in different home or hospital systems and of children attending day-cares. Unlike previously, the richness of the data gives opportunity for elaborate quantitative analysis, allowing us to follow individuals from birth until old age and study the effects of these two welfare developments and their interaction at different stages of the individual’s life course. Various measures of socioeconomic status and health are considered as outcomes, which makes it possible to assess to what extent and through which mechanisms these two policies helped reduce intergenerational social inequalities.This project is of academic, political and societal relevance for areas within and outside of Sweden, including both developed and developing countries. It contributes to the existing literature by studying how welfare policies targeted at young children can help to overcome present day societal challenges such as health and socioeconomic inequalities.