In recent years, the use of digital support systems in the administration of Swedish social assistance (SA) has become increasingly widespread. Current surveys show that around 10 percent of Swedish municipalities make use of so-called Robot Process Automation (RPA) in their everyday practice. As key arguments for the use of RPA-support, aspects such as unburdening employees of pure administrative tasks, as well as increased transparency and enhanced legal certainty for applicants, are often highlighted.

The present paper presents results from a larger research project addressing the practical use of RPA-support in Swedish Personal Social Services. The analyses are based on cross-sectional quantitative data from 800 cases collected in four medium-sized Swedish municipalities. Half of the cases reflect assessment outcomes before RPA-support was implemented; the other half show outcomes after implementation. The paper aims, first, to describe the character and contents of the different RPA-tools utilised in municipalities. Second, the paper aims to describe and analyse the outcomes of SA decisions before and after the implementation of RPA-support, respectively.

Our main findings are as follows: (a) while RPA can partially alleviate the administrative burden on social workers, human involvement remains essential for individual assessments; (b) even though the use of RPA-support does not establish any significant relation to the outcomes of SA eligibility assessments, the assessments are far less generous after the implementation of RPA than before; and (c) the changes in generosity are particularly notable with regard to applications outside of the National Benefit Standard, which is a strong predictor for the rejection of applications.

Access to the Swedish welfare state’s last safety net, social assistance, is ultimately determined through discretionary decision-making by social workers. This dissertation examines intersectional patterns and discriminatory bias in social workers’ assessments about social assistance eligibility. Focusing on factors related to applicants’ gender, family and ethnicity, the project comprises four studies, all of which highlight patterns regarding which applicants assessed as being eligible for support. Altogether, the project contributes to an expanded understanding of discriminatory tendencies in how social assistance policies are given practical meaning by the professionals that bring them into force.

The first study builds on data covering all social assistance eligibility decisions implemented in 25 municipalities during one calendar month in 2012 (n=472). The remaining three studies build on data from a vignette experiment conducted in 2018, in which just over 1,000 social workers from 19 municipalities, including Sweden’s three largest cities, participated. 

Results from both sources of data confirm the impression left by previous research that social assistance assessments are gendered. They show that the likelihood of granting assistance is determined through different standards for men and women. In the view of current knowledge gaps, an important contribution lies in bringing the issue of ethnicity bias to light. The results from the vignette experiment indicate that applicants with Arabic-sounding names are responded to with more conditionality than applicants with Swedish-sounding names, and that discriminatory biases related ethnicity are highly intertwined with gender biases.

By raising much-needed questions about the assessment of couples, the project also draws attention to the dissonance between the Swedish welfare state’s gender equality regime and the conditions for accessing social assistance. The results indicate that moral judgments about applicants’ gendered family roles affect social workers’ propensity to grant support to couples, and that such judgments take form through ethnicity bias. 

In terms of theory, the dissertation draws upon feminist and postcolonial perspectives on social policy as well as a street-level bureaucracy perspective on frontline work. Social assistance is understood as part of the welfare state’s wider politics of redistribution, and the quantitative patterns formed by social workers’ individual acts are seen in the light of structural inequalities. The dissertation presents a conceptual model for thinking about social assistance eligibility, emphasising uncertainty as an inescapable dimension of means-testing. A central argument is that eligibility issues decided at the street level cannot be separated from ongoing discretionary processes of policy implementation. While the risk of discrimination in social assistance assessments is inevitable, it tends to be concealed by the administrative arrangements through which policy comes to matter. 

In Sweden, trained social workers ultimately determine the right to social assistance (SA). This paper examines how a substance-abusing SA applicant’s gender and ethnicity affect assessments on eligibility. It further addresses whether professionals’ gender and migration background have bearing for such patterns. Social work professionals (n = 910) spread over 43 social service offices in 19 Swedish municipalities conducted assessments based on a vignette. Four versions of the vignette were used, in which the name of the applicant was varied. The names were two Swedish-sounding names and two Arabic-sounding names: one of each gender respectively. Data were analysed by means of cross tabulations and multilevel logistic regression analysis. The Swedish-sounding names were linked to a higher chance of granting compared to the Arabic-sounding names, whereas females more often were seen as eligible than males. The major finding was the combined impact of gender and ethnicity: Applicants attributed with an Arabic-sounding male name were less often seen as eligible than those with a Swedish-sounding female name. This bias was specifically manifest among female professionals. Further, native-born professionals generally viewed the applicant as eligible to a higher extent than foreign-born.

I Sverige avgörs rätten till ekonomiskt bistånd genom individuella bedömningar som utförs av socialarbetare. I den här studien undersöks hur den sökandes kön och etnicitet påverkar bedömningar av en ensamstående klient med missbruksproblem. Vidare analyseras huruvida de professionellas kön och migrationsbakgrund har betydelse för sådana mönster. Socialarbetare (n = 910) från 43 socialtjänstkontor i 19 svenska kommuner fick göra bedömningar utifrån en vinjett. Fyra versioner av vinjetten användes, i vilka namnet på den sökande varierades mellan två svenskklingande namn (ett manligt och ett kvinnligt) och två arabiskt klingande namn (ett manligt och ett kvinnligt). Data analyserades med hjälp av korstabeller och logistisk flernivåregressionsanalys. De svenskklingande namnen kunde kopplas till en högre chans att beviljas ekonomiskt bistånd jämfört med de arabiskt klingande namnen, medan kvinnor oftare sågs som berättigade till stöd än män. Det viktigaste resultatet var emellertid den kombinerade betydelsen av etnicitet och kön: sökande med arabiskt klingande mansnamn bedömdes mer sällan vara berättigade till ekonomiskt bistånd än de som tilldelats svenskklingande kvinnonamn. Vidare var inrikes födda professionella mer benägna att bevilja ekonomiskt bistånd än sina utrikes födda kollegor.

Social work professionals’ assessments of social assistance (SA) eligibility for a heterosexual couple with a baby are examined. Professionals (n = 899) spread over 43 social service offices in 19 Swedish municipalities assessed a vignette. According to the vignette, one of the parents abstained from paid work to take parental leave, which caused the couple's need for SA. Two vignette dimensions were varied: the couple's ethnicity (Swedish/Arabic) and gendered family roles (mother/father going on parental leave). Data were analysed using multilevel logistic regression modelling. The results show that the combination of the couple's gendered family roles and ethnicity seems to have bearing on the assessments. Professionals were most prone to grant SA to couples with Swedish names where the mother went from work to parental leave. The lowest granting rate was found in assessments of couples with the same gender setting and Arabic names.

This study examines patterns in social worker decisions on social assistance eligibility in Sweden. Focusing on intersections between applicants’ gender, country of birth and family situation, factors that statistically anticipate decisions on granting assistance to individuals from different sub-groups were explored. The sample comprises 423 applications and four sets of modified Poisson regression models were conducted. The results strengthen the impression of social assistance assessments as a practice marked by the professionals’ categorizations. In line with previous research, social workers seem to act upon, and reinforce, a male breadwinner model by putting more emphasis on men’s efforts to establish self-support. Female applicants, in turn, are seemingly less likely to be granted assistance if they are assessed as having a problem with abuse of alcohol or illicit drugs. Also, having a family seems altogether to have a negative impact on women’s chances of approval. When considering gender and country of birth, decisions on social assistance eligibility largely reflect patterns of unemployment.