Population Ageing - A Threat to the Welfare State? [electronic resource] : The Case of Sweden / edited by Tommy Bengtsson.

The Ageing Population -- In This World Nothing Is Certain but Death and Taxes: Financing the Elderly -- A Stable Pension System: The Eighth Wonder -- Ways of Funding and Organising Elderly Care in Sweden -- Financing Healthcare: A Gordian Knot Waiting to Be Cut -- Towards a New Swedish Model?.

This book is the first to take a comprehensive view of the challenges that population ageing present in the near future taking Sweden as the case. Can the increasing number of retirees per worker be stopped by immigration or increasing fertility or will we need to increase pension age instead? Cost for the social-care system is readily increasing; even more is the costs for health care. Can the galloping costs be funded by an increase in taxes or do we need to make reforms, similar to the ones already made in the pension system, which has been used as a model for many other countries. The fact that it is difficult to make health care dependent on personal contributions, as is the case of the pension system, funding of health care is a true test of solidarity across generations. The book ends with a discussion on whether the demographic challenge to the welfare system is also a threat to the welfare state as such.

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