Thank you for the interview (November 11) with Swedish economist Asa Lofstrom on working women, State help with raising a family, and women’s financial independence.

Sweden and some other Scandinavian countries have indeed been very successful at helping women achieve their dream of combining work with child-bearing and family commitments.

This has been achieved, as Dr Lofstrom emphasised, by generous maternal and paternal leave, heavily subsidised state or private childcare and elderly care facilities, and after-school facilities (for older children) until the working day ends.

These very comprehensive aspects of Scandinavian welfare states have produced Europe’s highest rates of female participation in work outside the home, and which have not been to the detriment of having children. Combined with well-funded pensions, these welfare state facilities for female workers have produced the most financially independent women in Europe.

Obviously all this welfare comes at a cost expressed in terms of income, national insurance and property wealth taxes. However, social scientists have consistently claimed that women’s financial independence (particularly in the case of divorce or widowhood), and more even wealth distribution, are mainly responsible for higher levels of happiness in Scandinavia (in spite of the weather) than in southern European states.

Those sceptical of these scientific claims have only to note the current miserable news items from most southern European states.