Conservation or disappearance? The public provider of home care services in a system of choice

This article aims to analyse the position of the public provider (i.e. share of recipients) of home-care services in Swedish municipalities with marketization: a system of choice. Following the literature, an assumption is that the public provider has difficulties in surviving the competition with private home-care providers. In addition, the relevancy of this assumption could differ between different municipal settings. To test this assumption, we use statistical analysis. The main result is that the public provider is a 'strong player' in most municipalities experiencing marketization. However, there exists a variation in this respect – the position varies between municipalities