Bostadsbidrag och trångboddhet. Har 1997 års bostadsbidragsreform förbättrat bostadssituationen för barnen?

One major goal of the Swedish housing allowance system is to prevent families with children from living overcrowded. The share of children living overcrowded among the Swedish recipient households, however, has increased between 1994 and 2002 by almost 15 percent. At the same time, a number of studies have reported that families with children have become increasingly unsatisfied with their housing situation and it seems as if the housing situation for families with children is becoming more tensed. The purpose of this report is to examine whether the Swedish housing allowance reform in 1997 has had an effect on the share of households with children living overcrowded. That is, have the households adjusted their housing consumption and moved into crowded housing as a result of the decreased amount of housing allowance? Data for this study is extracted from the Swedish National Insurance Board’s databank on housing allowance recipients and the analysis is focused on families with children. The result from this study suggests that the constraint on dwelling size lead to a 40 percent increase of moving into cramped housing. The conclusion is that the Swedish housing allowance reform has had a checking effect on households’ housing consumption and eventually a negative effect on children’s housing situation.