The origin of the Swedish Welfare State as a solution to the Great Depression

This bachelor thesis focuses on the impacts of the Great Depression on Sweden during the 1930’s. Its main goal is to analyse and evaluate the link between the origin of Swedish welfare state and the Great Depression, since that topic is not yet thoroughly explored. That is the reason why this work could be beneficial for further research. This work primarily focuses on the impacts of the crisis on Sweden and governmental measures taken in reaction to the crisis, which led to the foundation of the welfare state. In its theoretical part, the work focuses on characteristics, evolution and basic typology of a welfare state and then further deals with the economic and political development of Sweden before the year 1929 with the focus on the era of industrialization, first world war and the 1920’s, which had effect on the further development during the crisis. In its practical part, the work deals with the impacts of the Great Depression on the Swedish economy and the follow-up measures of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which were supposed to help the rapid economic recovery and which were connected to the foundation of the Swedish welfare state. Lastly, the development of Sweden in the 1930’s is compared to the economic and political development of the United States of America, the Great Britain and Germany. The description method is used in the thesis in addition to the above-mentioned analytic method and it’s used to describe the individual measures of the governments. Finally, the synthesis method is used at the end of the thesis during the summary of all existing findings. The hypothesis Sweden has managed to break out of the consequences of the Great Depression more quickly and with less hard of a hit as other states, which can also be attributed to the reforms of the Social Democratic Party has been verified in this work.