Resources and the life course: Patterns through the demographic transition

In most mammals, and in the majority of traditional human societies for which data exist, status, power, or resource control correlates with lifetime reproductive success; male and female patterns differ. Because such correlations are often argued to have disappeared in human societies during the demographic transition of the nineteenth century, we analyzed wealth and lifetime reproductive success in a nineteenth-century Swedish population in four economically diverse parishes, subsuming geographic and temporal variation. Children of both sexes born to poorer parents were more likely than richer children to die or emigrate before reaching maturity. Poorer men, and women whose fathers were poorer, were less likely to marry in the parish than others, largely as a result of differential mortality and migration. Of all adults of both sexes who remained in their home parish and thus generated complete lifetime records, richer individuals had greater lifetime fertility and more children alive at age ten, than others. The age-specific fertility of richer women rises slightly sooner, and reaches a higher peak, than that of poorer women. These patterns persisted throughout the period of the sample (1824-1896). Thus, wealth appears, even during the demographic transition in an egalitarian society, to have influenced lifetime reproductive success positively.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29881/1/0000234.pd

Foreign trade as fiscal policy : tariff setting and customs revenue in Sweden, 1830–1913

Two of the most defining trends of the nineteenth century were the growth of international trade and the increased role of government activities in the economy. In the conjuncture between these developments lie taxes on foreign trade. Sweden was one of the examples where customs revenue became the single most important source of revenue before WWI. This article sets out to test how this source of revenue could increase as much as it did. The analysis focuses mainly on trade policy and how tariffs were set and how that affected revenue. The results show that Swedish liberalisation of trade forced a switch in the fiscal structure of tariffs, moving revenue to fewer commodities. Increased importance was given to consumption goods with lower elasticity of demand. Trade continued to increase under fiscal taxation, which led to increases in revenue. During the early period increased revenue was achieved with higher tariffs on a few key commodities. Towards the end of the century tariffs on agricultural and capital goods became more fiscally relevant, which could have clashed with protectionist intentions. The article highlights that more work is needed on this fiscal component of trade policy.The Impact of Tariffs on the Swedish Economy: Fiscal Policy, Efficient Protection, and Trade Flows, 1783-191