Trajectories of Latent Vulnerability and Distress: Identifying Social and Spatial Fringes of the Swedish Population

It can be argued that a society is never better than how Individuals on its social and spatial fringes are faring. This motivates the purpose of this paper, which is to study how vulnerable groups can be identified, defined and explored in a spatial perspective using latent class analysis (LCA) on the whole Swedish population. We use space to refine meanings of vulnerability in individuals and groups, by contextualizing their vulnerability. This knowledge is fundamental for creating equal living conditions and for promoting the social cohesion needed for socially sustainable societies. Thus, equality and spatial integration are basic ideas in welfare policy but in recent years, the idea of integration has met various challenges with new population groups, rural–urban polarization, and disadvantaged housing areas. Using register data, we here identified life course trajectories associated with vulnerability, applying LCA to the total Swedish population aged 25 to 59 years. We identified latent classes of life courses, and detected and explored some classes with more vulnerability than others. The spatial patterns of vulnerable individuals were analysed using individualized neighbourhoods including the proportion of closest neighbours belonging to a latent class. A second LCA of vulnerable individuals refined the findings into different types of distress; extra distressed life courses were found in the metropolitan areas in Million program areas in urban outskirts, and other distressed life courses were more often found in unattractive (low housing price) rural areas, rural fringes.