Marriage choices and social reproduction

This article studies the relationship between partner selection and socioeconomic status (SES) attainment and mobility in five rural parishes in southern Sweden, 1815-1894. Three different aspects of partner selection are considered: age, social origin, and geographical origin. We use an individual-level database containing information on the SES origin (parental land holding and occupation), age difference, and place of birth of the married couple. The results show a powerful association between partner selection and SES attainment and mobility. Social heterogamy was particularly important, but age heterogamy and geographic exogamy was also clearly related to both SES attainment and mobility.age homogamy, geographic endogamy, intergenerational social mobility, partner selection, social homogamy, socioeconomic attainment

Criados agrícolas en la Suecia del XIX. El caso de Escania

In Sweden, as in other parts of north Western Europe, the servant system was well integrated with the marriage pattern and household formation system. While waiting to get married, young people for a period of their Iives worked as unmarried servants living in a master's household. Thus, Laslett's term "life cycle servants" is well suited to Swedish conditions. However, during the nineteenth century the importance of the servant system began to decrease, as a consequence of commercialisation of agriculture, industrialisation and urbanisation. On large farms and manors unmarried servants were replaced by married contract-workers, who lived with their families in dwellings owned by the employer. To young people the appearance of this new occupation meant a chance of forming a family without having access to a farm or crof1. In the twentieth century, the mechanisation of the agricultural production and migration from rural to urban and industrial areas further reduced the importance of the servant system in the countryside. The servant occupation became more or less a female occupation of domestic service in urban areas