Home preparedness and housing conditions

The purpose of this study is to investigate the significance of housing conditions for home preparedness in Sweden. In this study, housing conditions refer to which part of Sweden people live in (in terms of civil defence regions), whether they live in a big city or the countryside (and everything in between) and the type of housing (villa, condominium and apartment). The study includes three perspectives of home preparedness: the estimated ability of the household to handle a disturbance, its access to material resources and if the respondents have taken special actions to prepare for crises and war. The study uses statistical data collected through a survey made by Statistics Sweden (SCB) on behalf of Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). The study uses a multivariate regression analysis that in addition to the housing conditions mentioned also includes the variables of income, age and level of education. The results show that living in a villa co-varies positively in nearly all respects with home preparedness compared to living in an apartment, even when controlling for the influence of the other variables. Living in a small municipality (in the sense of a smaller city, urban area or rural municipality) only seems to have a bearing on people's estimated ability to handle a disorder (concerning food, fluid and heat retention) compared to living in a large municipality, but not in other ways. In which part of a country people live seems to have little importance for their home preparedness.