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Research project The (tax)free lunch. The Rikskuponger meal vouchers as a market device in Sweden, 1973–2014

Between 1973 and 1991, Swedish employers could offer their employees meal vouchers, known as "Rikskuponger", as a tax-free perk. These booklets of coupons, available in various denominations, gave workers without access to workplace canteens the freedom to choose from a variety of lunch restaurants.
Gösta-Ekman-eng

The Director General of the Swedish National Tax Agency, Gösta Ekman, with a National Coupon, 1976. Photo: Gunnar Lundmark / SvD / TT

While the voucher system was initially launched as a corporate initiative by Eurocard, it soon gained government backing driven by public health motives. The system included an indirect subsidy to lunch restaurants, but it also helped shaping new choice-based norms. In this project, we trace the history of Rikskuponger in the transition from state interventionism to individual free choice, and as part of the marketization of domestic work in the wake of increased female labour market participation.

By using a variety of source material from businesses, the state, and labourmarket organizations, we explore the launch of the system, the tax reform in 1991, and the various efforts to reintroduce subsidized meal vouchers, up until 2014 when the paper vouchers were discontinued. Drawing on theories of market devices, consumer engineering and neoliberalization, we examine how Rikskuponger, as a payment technology and as a commercial steering mechanism, influenced and interacted with (1) the expansion of the restaurant market, (2) the construction of the worker as a consumer, and (3) the gendered division of labour.