ABSTRACT
At an early stage of its development, the Swedish labour movement rejected the idea of a detailed and frequently personally offensive testing of individual means, to which applicants for poor law relief, the only source of assistance for the needy, had to submit. Instead the Social Democratic Party emphasised the need to establish a system of social security that guaranteed each individual a basic minimum income. The elderly were the first to benefit when old age pensions were introduced in 1913 as a right of citizenship. These pensions, however, were very meagre and had to be extensively supplemented on a means-tested basis out of national and local relief funds. For the next half-century pensions policy was largely concerned with improving the basic pension to provide an adequate income for the elderly without recourse to poor relief. Eventually in 1960 the introduction of the national supplementary pension (ATP) initiated a new phase in the development of the Swedish welfare state. As a result of this reform, pension rights above the basic pension became income-related. This shift towards providing compensation for a reduction in income rather than merely guaranteeing a basic minimum level of provision meant that the public social security system became of increasing importance to the growing numbers of highly paid employees. Benefits related to middle-class income levels are one of the factors underlying the explosive growth of social expenditure and taxation from the 1960s onwards.
