The Centre for Health Equity Studies (CHESS) has been on the leading frontier of research on the health impact of social and economic inequality. This book will become a landmark representing some of the most important work to emerge from this group to date. Over the last few years many scientists and policy makers have discussed the potential impact that social and economic policies may have on health. While the topic is clearly important, usually the results of analyses are disappointing. Here, however we have data from arguably one of the most forward-looking countries in the world informing us about the links between social and economic policies enacted during the period of growth of the Swedish welfare state and numerous health outcomes for a broad and diverse group of Swedes. A major economic recession during the 1990s provides us with further insight into the ways in which the welfare state policies enacted decades earlier may have softened the blow of the recession in Sweden. The book will have far-reaching effects.

Fritzell and Lundberg have assembled an impressive team of co-authors from CHESS to explore the full range of issues related to social determinants of health in the context of Swedish contemporary welfare policy. To understand the context of the study, it is helpful to understand that Sweden, along with a few other Nordic countries, adopted a welfare regime based on a social democratic model. Early in the book, the authors outline the unique dimensions of this model, quoting Esping-Anderson: ‘Rather than tolerate a dualism between state and market, between working class and middle class, the social democrats pursued a welfare state that would promote an equality of the highest standards, not an equality of minimal needs as was pursued elsewhere’ (Esping-Anderson, 1990, p 27). In comparison with the welfare models in the US for instance, Sweden exemplifies a broader, more generous, less exclusionary approach to welfare supports. The question then before us is ‘Did this welfare state as constructed by the Swedes starting from the mid-twentieth century protect Swedish citizens in terms of the physical and mental health and functioning through the upturns and downturns of the economic cycles that occurred over the last 30 years?’.