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The purpose of this paper is to compare sickness presence (SP) and sickness absence (SA) regarding the strength of their relationship to health/ill‐health. In a previous Canadian study a stronger association between SP and health/ill‐health than between SA and health/ill‐health was shown.

Five Swedish data sets from the years 1992 to 2005 provided the study populations, including both representative samples and specific occupational groups (n=425‐3,622). Univariate correlations and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed. The data sets contained questions on SP and SA as well as on various health complaints and, in some cases, self‐rated health (SRH).

The general trend was that correlations and odds ratios increased regularly for both SP and SA, with SP showing the highest values. In one data set, SRH was predicted by a combination of the two measures, with an explained variance of 25 percent. Stratified analyses showed that the more irreplaceable an individual is at work, the larger is the difference in correlation size between SP and SA with regard to SRH. SP also showed an accentuated and stronger association with SRH than SA among individuals reporting poor economic circumstances.

The results support the notion that SA is an insufficient, and even misleading, measure of health status for certain groups in the labor market, which seem to have poorer health than the measure of SA would indicate.

A combined measure of sickness presence and absence may be worth considering as an indicator of both individual and organizational health status.

We construct yearly fiscal series for Sweden between 1719 and 2003 including expenditures, revenues, deficits and debt. We present measures for the fiscal branch of the central government as well as for the consolidated fiscal and monetary branch, which includes fiscal seigniorage. We evaluate the reliability and consistency of the series by calculating the difference between budget deficits and the change in debt to test if the differences are serially uncorrelated around zero, which we confirm.

The purpose of this paper is to explore military service-linked economic and social governing initiatives in early twentieth-century Sweden, and thereby offer a broadened understanding of educational institutions as governing arenas.

Using the term “governing” to describe and analyse various calculated techniques of the state – and/or affiliated governing actors – to influence and direct the behaviour of conscripts in order to deal with particular economic and/or social problems, the author ask what kind of economic and social problems policymakers and social commentators of education were looking to deal with, why military service was considered a suitable means and/or setting for doing so, and what governing techniques they proposed be used. The author furthermore take in consideration the intimate links between citizenship, gender, and military service and argue that the governing initiatives analysed enables us to understand these links in partly new and a more concrete way.

The study shows that there were numerous ideas and requests amongst policymakers and social commentators of education on making use of the nation’s conscription scheme for non-military purposes as it provided the nation with a unique opportunity to reach and influence entire generations of men on the threshold of adulthood. Proposals included, e.g., the use of various forms of instruction in assorted subjects, facilitation of base libraries and an extension of the period of military service, in order to deal with economic and social problems such as, e.g., mass unemployment, alcohol abuse, elementary education deficiencies, and uneducated voters, as well as shortages of skilled personnel in particular branches of great importance for the nation’s economy.

While there is a sizable and growing body of research on governing initiatives in non-military educational settings, proposed and implemented to solve various economic and social problems in society, scholars in Sweden and elsewhere have largely overlooked the use and role of military service in such undertakings. This paper seeks to redress the balance and thereby offers a broadened understanding of educational institutions as governing arenas.