Dimensions of welfare in a Comparative Scandinavian Study

as a word has many connotations. In the English language and particularly in its American variant the word brings to mind the notion of public assistance. Something of the same idea is present in the most common usage of the term welfare A society with a high amount of public expenditure in the fields of social security, education and health is characterized as a state. Here the word refers to the state of need-satisfaction in a national population. The aim has been to measure and describe or the state of need-satisfaction in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Welfare as a concept denoting the state of need-satisfaction in a population is usually studied and described by some system of social indicators. The indicators refer to different components or aspects of welfare. However, indicators of are not merely some kind of variables. They are explicitly value-oriented, and as such concerned with the good and bad life. Hence, indicators of may also be labeled value-dimensions or values. In developing a system of values two problems in particular are pressing. The first and very basic problem concerns the source of these values, and the basic query is from where we get the values. In current debates there have, roughly speaking, been two opposing views. According to one view values or dimensions should be established by studying objective facts, and in particular, people's goal-directed activities and conditions under which people suffer. In the last analysis, then, the values are established by the researcher irrespective of whether he works in collaboration with the people studied or not. According to another view the values have to be established by studying the subjective per-