Sweden’s conscription system is no longer the social melting pot often depicted. Researcher Peter Bäckström of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI, examined register data for nearly 480,000 young people born between 2000 and 2004 and found that children of highly educated and high-income parents are more likely to be called to enlistment and more likely to serve.

The skew is not presented as a failure of selection officials. Rather, the system is working as designed: when Sweden tests many young people but selects only a small share, it tends to choose those with the strongest scores, motivation, and suitability, which correlate with social background.

Read the entire piece in Dagens Nyheter.