Jan Helmdag Researcher

I am an Assistant Professor at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) and member of the Social Policy Unit (SocPol), led by Prof Tomas Korpi. I hold a PhD in political science.

I am the managing director of the Social Policy Indicators (SPIN) database, led by Prof Kenneth Nelson (University of Oxford). In SPIN, we collect institutional data on a large variety of indicators on income taxes and social policies, e.g., unemployment, sickness, accident, pensions, social assistance, parental leave, student support, and housing benefits. Besides data gathering and research, one of my central tasks within SPIN is to ensure synchronisation with the research infrastructure on Democracy, Environment, Migration, Social Policy, Conflict, and Representation (DEMSCORE).

I am currently leading the project “The dualisation of social rights in Sweden: How social policy design can maintain or mitigate income inequality”, which is funded by FORTE with 3.5 million SEK. In this project, I investigate how dualisation within employment is either perpetuated or mitigated by social policy arrangements outside of employment, specifically by looking at compensation levels of employment-related benefits in Sweden (1960–2026). One of the main outputs of the project will be the Benefit Dualisation Index (BDI), which measures the gap in social rights between labor market insiders and outsiders and will be available in a newly formed SPIN module.

During the Trinity Term (April–June '25) I am a visiting researcher at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI), University of Oxford.

My CV can be downloaded here. pdf, 214.3 kB.