On administrative borders and accessibility to public services: : The case of hospitals in Sweden.

An administrative border might hinder the optimal allocation of a given set of resources by restricting the flow of goods, services, and people. In this paper we address the question: Do administrative borders lead to poor accessibility to public service such as hospitals? In answering the question, we have examined the case of Sweden and its regional borders. We have used detailed data on the Swedish road network, its hospitals, and its geo-coded population. We have assessed the population’s spatial accessibility to Swedish hospitals by computing the inhabitants’ distance to the nearest hospital. We have also elaborated several scenarios ranging from strongly confining regional borders to no confinements of borders and recomputed the accessibility. Our findings imply that administrative borders are only marginally worsening the accessibility.