From poster child to worst performing EU economy: how bad housing policy broke Sweden | Brett Christophers

High mortgage debt and a broken rental system is taking its toll on a country once seen as the example for others to follow

Given media coverage, one could, in late 2022, have been forgiven for thinking that little of importance was going on in Sweden besides gang violence and hand-wringing over Nato accession. But a November report in the newspaper Aftonbladet suggested that something else just as important was afoot. In Sodertalje, in southern Stockholm, it was widely observed that children were eating much more" at school on Mondays than previously. One food supplier spoke of an avalanche-like" change.

My mind went back to this evidence of increasing child poverty when, four months later, the European Commission's latest forecasts predicted Sweden to be the worst performing of all EU economies in 2023 - a projection in line with the Swedish government's own.

Brett Christophers is a professor in the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Sweden's Uppsala University and author of Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World