The role of the family and state in old-age support: the Swedish experience up to 1913.

This paper presents the Swedish experience of caring for the old prior to the welfare state, and focusses on the State's effort to place the responsibility for the aged on the children and kin. If old people were poor and without kin the congregation, e.g. the local community, were responsible for their care and support. The hospitals were built for other groups in society and only the poorhouses were open to the elderly. Pressure on the local community was strongly increased by demographic changes at the turn of the century and the Riksdag was able to unite in passing a law for a State-administered People's Pension 1913.