Method

In many studies of voluntary simplicity, data was collected through interviews and surveys that provide rich information on many qualitative aspects of people’s changes to obtain a less stressful life situation. The drawback with such approaches is that they are commonly based on small data sets, which makes it difficult to determine to what extent the results are representative of the population at large.

Studies based on surveys made iu the US, UK and Australia report that 20% to 25% of the population aged 30 to 59 has engaged in similar stress-reducing lifestyle changes (Schor, 1998; Hamilton, 2003; Hamilton & Mail, 2003). From a Swedish point of view - where a strong Lutheran work ethic has been the dominating paradigm for ages, and where recent governments have been politically successfill in national elections by pursuing a ‘primacy of work' principle designed to create measures for people to find jobs and support themselves - it appears doubtful that as many as one-quarter of the population in working ages would reduce their working hours. The welfare regime of Sweden, however, although recently put under financial pressure, redistributes vast resources among individuals via a plethora of transfer systems, which enables households to obtain a livelihood not solely based on work income. From this point of view, the prerequisites for voluntary simplicity in Sweden may be more beneficial than in countries pursuing more neoliberal political agendas including less income redistribution.

In order to get a broader view of the diffusion of simplicity-seeking behaviour, register data provides a useful alternative to interviews and surveys. A positive trait of using register data for this research purpose is that this data covers the entire population over many years. This implies that there are no non-response issues frequently associated with surveys. Low response rates may negatively affect representativeness and reduce the strength of the conclusions. Having access to registers that include information on every single individual enables the study of rare attributes, i.e. the investigation of individuals whose characteristics and changes in characteristics are uncommon in the population. The identified group can also be compared with the population in general or whatever group is found relevant. The use of register data, however, is affected by some drawbacks that have to be kept irr mind. Register data is not primarily produced for scientific purposes, but in accordance to needs of different bodies of government. This type of data does not cany much information about individuals’ values and attitudes, but it reflects revealed preferences and choices made within different spheres of everyday life. For example, choices related to family formation/dissolution (e.g. having children, getting married), the labour market (e.g. getting a job, change jobs, earnings, occupation), geographic mobility (e.g. commuting, migration), and consumption related to housing and car ownership are covered in this data set. Since individuals can be followed longitudinally across years, it is possible to observe changes that hint at shifts towards leading a ‘simpler' life.

At this point, it may be obvious that the proposed method is not useful for studying all parts of the multi-faceted concept of voluntary simplicity. People’s perceptions of voluntary simplicity and their views on their life situation cannot be found in register data, but they leave traces that may be associated with simplicity in different ways. From this point of departure, we searched within the literature for definitions of the phenomenon irr line with what would be possible to study by means of register data. Admittedly, there may be many possible definitions suitable for the research design proposed here, but we settled for a definition proposed by Etzioni (1998) cited earlier. Etzioni's (1998) category of ‘holistic simplifiers’ is operationalized by selecting individuals who irr 2014 (the latest year the requir ed register data was collected) were residing in affluent neighbourhoods in metropolitan areas or major cities (parishes with higher than average work income in each city, respectively). From this group, individuals are selected who two years later have moved to other parts of the country' (i.e. outside the territory defined in the fust step) and reduced then^- work income by at least 50%. In a subsequent step of the analysis, these individuals are compared to individuals who stay in the affluent neighbourhoods.