Introduction

Health and inequalities are of great interest to most people. When asked to rank what is important in life the vast majority put health at the top of their list (Holmberg and Weibull, 2001). Health is also an everyday concern for most of us, and this is reflected in simple things like the reference to health in common greeting phrases (‘How are you?’) and when suggesting a toast (‘Santé’). Inequalities, as in an unjust distribution of resources between individuals or groups, also seem to catch people's attention from an early age. The distribution and redistribution of resources is also the central aim of the political process. It is therefore no surprise that inequalities in health have generated a great deal of interest, among researchers, politicians and the general public alike.

Over recent decades research into health inequalities has produced a wealth of findings that have given rise to much debate. We would nevertheless argue that more remains to be said about the issue, both relating to the mechanisms that generate health inequalities and the policy implications these inequalities carry. In addition, we believe that there are insights to be gained by addressing these issues from a Swedish perspective. Sweden has been a special case in discussions about welfare states and welfare regimes, as an example of both success and failure. Sweden has also been referred to in the discussion about the size of health inequalities, and the possible links between health inequalities and social policies. In Sweden there is not only a strong tradition of research on health inequalities, but also a strong tradition of research into living conditions in general, often referred to as ‘welfare research’.

In this volume we will therefore try to put health inequalities into the wider context of welfare resources based on the Swedish case; in doing so our work will rest on three different, but related, pillars. Our focus is to analyse, describe and understand health inequalities and how they are shaped, recreated, changed and influenced by social stratification, societal changes and public policy at the most general level. The field of health inequalities research has expanded considerably over the past 25 years or so and most of our questions and analyses are embedded in that field of research.