ABSTRACT
Finland’s northernmost province, Lapland, has an area of 99,200 km2, or a little less than 30 percent of the total area of Finland, but its population consists of only 200,000 people, about 5 percent of the nation’s total. Regardless of the developmental differences and qualifications in the different parts of the country, the Finnish government as a rule assumed a fairly impartial attitude in the development of the commercial and industrial life and of the public services in each area. Protected by regional legislation initiated in the 1960s, the Province of Lapland is very much the object of special development subsidization. Finland is a nation with a so-called mixed economy in which public services are mostly organized by local administrative units, but the government is primarily responsible for the financing. State support is highest in Lapland and other marginal areas, with the expenditure on basic education, for example, being borne almost entirely by the state.
