Abstract Spatial dimensions of welfare‐state change remain underexplored in research on social assistance (SA). This study presents the first long‐term spatial analysis of SA in Sweden, tracing municipal patterns of recipiency between 1986 and 2020 using spatial clustering and longitudinal panel analysis. The results show that national trends towards lower recipiency have been shaped by population‐dense municipalities, illustrating how a national perspective can mask spatial heterogeneity in welfare provision. At the municipal level, an emerging divergence between declining recipiency rates and rising durations indicates increasingly selective access to assistance and declining uptake. This pattern is most evident in large, population‐dense municipalities and those with substantial foreign‐born populations, where the decline in rates has been most pronounced. The results point to a spatially uneven process of selectivity unfolding against the backdrop of an eroded universalism, reflecting broader processes of market dependency, welfare transformation, and uneven development.
Viktor Ottosson (Thu,) studied this question.
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