Professor warns rural Sweden faces a tougher future

The sense of being forgotten repeatedly expressed in SVT interviews from sparsely populated northern Värmland does not surprise Charlotta Mellander, a professor of economics at Jönköping International Business School.

She is calling for new political solutions and greater clarity ahead of the 2026 election, rather than a return to familiar slogans.

“I think people have got off too easily by saying ‘the whole of Sweden must live’. It is clearly a fine idea, but the whole country is not functioning today and will function even less in the future. Simply repeating slogans suggests that the problems are not being taken seriously,” Mellander told SVT.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, Mellander has visited around 250 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities. In many places, she has seen the same pattern as in northern Värmland.

Young people move to cities for education or work, raising the average age and reducing the birth rate. At the same time, few people from elsewhere move to these communities.

“That also erodes purchasing power and the basis for providing services such as schools and healthcare. Many of these places will undoubtedly face extremely difficult conditions in the future,” she said.

Calls for clearer commitments

Mellander said it was complicated to determine how politicians should respond. Redistributing resources from cities to sparsely populated areas is not necessarily fair, she said, and it is not desirable for politicians to decide where people should live.

However, she said politicians could influence developments by determining what public services must be available. This could include regulating how far people may have to travel to the nearest school, adjusting qualification requirements and examining digital solutions.

She called for a more specific political debate to give voters clearer choices ahead of the election and to define what people in sparsely populated areas should be able to expect in services such as education and care.

“We probably have to try to find new solutions to these problems, because they will not disappear,” Mellander said.