Welfare problems decrease the well-being and quality of life among individuals. In this article, the following central welfare problems are discussed: (long-term) unemployment, economic problems, health problems, experiences of threat or violence, crowded housing, lack of interpersonal relationships and sleeping problems. We sometimes refer to these problems as welfare problems, whereas on other occasions we refer to them as welfare disadvantages. Naturally, however, welfare problems and welfare disadvantages refer to the same thing.
Individuals can suffer from no, one or several welfare problems. Further, the correlations between the welfare problems can be strong or weak. This article is concerned with both the accumulation of and the correlations between welfare problems.
The reason it is interesting and important to analyze the occurrence of welfare problems and their connections with each other is that this gives us essential information about which problems decrease the quality of life among individuals. If an individual is suffering from a welfare problem that is strongly correlated with other problems, this individual may be at risk of accumulating more problems and becoming socially excluded. For example, it is shown in this article that economic problems are quite often correlated with other problems, and that the lack of a close friend is not.
We find that the correlations are stronger among natives than among immigrants, even if immigrants suffer from more welfare problems compared to natives. Thus, it is not self-evident that strong correlations between welfare problems and a large accumulation of problems are apparent at the same time.
