Historical roots of the dual-earner model: Women’s labour force participation in Sweden, 1870–1960

Today, Sweden has one of the highest female labour force participation rates in the developed world, but how deep are the roots of women’s involvement in gainful employment? In this article, I present new estimates of women’s labour force participation rate between 1870 and 1960, the time when the country shifted from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial and services-based society. The revised data give a very different pattern from existing series; I find that female participation displays a clear U-shape: falling from the late nineteenth century,reaching a trough in the 1940s, and then starting to rise from the 1960s. Falling employment in agriculture was not balanced out by expanding opportunities in manufacturing, but women’s gainful employment started expanding as the white-collar services sector grew and women’s education increased - following the pattern set out by Goldin’s theory of the U-curve. The male breadwinner period was short and less pronounced in Sweden than in most other countrieshowever. Participation among adult women in the late nineteenth century was above 55 percent, and never fell below 40 percent at the lowest point. My findings lend support to the idea that the dual-earner model of present-day Sweden could be the outcome of a longer historical trajectory

In situ X-ray diffraction of CaO based CO2 sorbents

In situ X-ray diffraction coupled with Rietveld refinement has been used to study CO2 capture by CaO, Ca(OH)2 and partially hydrated CaO, as a function of temperature. Phase quantification by Rietveld refinement was performed to monitor the conversion to CaCO3 and the results were compared to those derived using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). It was found that Ca(OH)2 converted directly to 100% CaCO3 without the formation of a CaO intermediate, at ca. 600 °C. Both pure CaO and partially hydrated CaO (33.6 wt% Ca(OH)2) reached the same capture capacity, containing approximately 65 wt% CaCO3 at 800 °C. It was possible to provide direct evidence of the capture mechanism. The stresses in the Ca(OH)2 phase of the partially hydrated CaO were found to be more than 20 times higher than its strength, leading to disintegration and the generation of nano-sized crystallites. The crystallite size determined using diffraction (75 × 16 nm) was in good agreement with the average crystallite size observed using TEM (of 83 × 16 nm). Electron diffraction patterns confirmed coexistence of CaO and Ca(OH)2. The analysis provides an explanation of the enhanced capture/disintegration observed in CaO in the presence of steam

Persistently egalitarian? Swedish income inequality in 1613 and the four-estate parliament

There is a widespread perception that present-day Nordic egalitarianism is the outcome of a long historical continuity, where the strong political position of peasant farmers and weak feudalism were marking characteristics of pre-industrial society. However, little empirical evidence so far exists on the distribution of income for the early modern period. In this paper, we draw on the schedule and individual assessments devised by the authorities to distribute the tax-burden associated with the Älvsborg ransom to estimate income inequality and the share of income accruing to top income earners and to different social groups in the Swedish realm (present-day Sweden and Finland) in 1613. Using this information, we are able to speak to several debates on pre-industrial distribution of income and historical inequality in the Nordic countries. We find that the income share of the richest one percent was 13 percent while the share of the top 0.01 percent stood at 2 percent. Sweden was characterized by a twopronged social structure where a large share of income was held by the absolute top as well as by the peasants who made up the majority of the population, while the nobility, clergy, burghers and other middle-rank groups held relatively small income shares not least due to their small population numbers. This finding helps explain the relatively strong position of peasants as a fourth estate within the early modern Swedish parliament. While Sweden in the early seventeenth century was relatively equal compared to other contemporary societies, the egalitarian social structure was upended over the subsequent centuries resulting in vast economic and political inequality by the late nineteenth century. Thus, there is no apparent continuity between early modern equality and post-WW2 egalitarianism

Women’s work and wages in the sixteenth-century and Sweden’s position in the “Little divergence”

We use a unique source from the Swedish royal demesnes to examine the work and relative wages of women in sixteenth century Sweden, an economic laggard in the Early Modern period. The source pertains to workers hired on yearly contracts, a type more representative for historical labour markets than day-labour on large construction sites, and allows us to observe directly the food consumed by workers. We speak to the debate on the “Little Divergence” within Europe as women’s work and gender differentials in pay is a key indicator of women’s relative autonomy and seen as a cause for the economic ascendency of the North Sea region during the period. We find small gender differentials among both unskilled and skilled workers, indicating that Sweden was a part of the “golden age” for women. We argue that despite superficial equality, women’s economic outlooks were restrained in many other ways – including their access to higher skilled work and jobs in the expanding parts of the economy – adding important nuance to the discussion about the relationship between women’s social position and economic growth in the Early Modern period

Incomes and Income Inequality in Stockholm, 1870–1970: Evidence from Micro Data

This paper builds on a new dataset from the population register, comprising 38,022 randomly sampled Stockholm residents. The register was also the income tax list, with information about people’s incomes of various types, age, and household composition, in the years 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1940 and 1950. We use this dataset, along with the census of 1930, which uniquely included income information, and a Statistics Sweden random sample for 1960 and 1970, to calculate the growth and distribution of incomes in Stockholm over a hundred years. The Gini coefficient between 1870 and 1920 was high for both individuals and households, around 60-70 and with no change statistically significant at the 95 percent level. After 1920 inequality fell quite steadily for every benchmark year. The top decile’s share of incomes (among households) fell from 50 percent or higher in 1870–1920 to less than 40 percent in 1930 and around 30 percent in 1950. The equalization was driven not only by gains for middle income groups, but also by gains for the bottom half of the distribution. Women constituted the larger share of the bottom half of income earners. Domestic servants, the single largest group in the city, earned very little but reduced their share of working-class jobs from 45 percent in 1870 to 10 percent in 1950. Generally, upgrading jobs was an important way of reducing income inequality. Decomposing the inequality decline from 1920 to 1950 between age, gender, class and sector of occupation shows that class was by far the largest determinant of inequality and of its decline

What Happened to the Incomes of the Rich during the Great Levelling? Evidence from Swedish Individual-level Data, 1909–1950

Much of the income equalization that took place during the first half of the twentieth century was driven by shifts in the shares of the incomes of the rich, such as the top 1 percent. But the available studies using tabulated data have not been wholly able to account for the relative decline in top earners’ incomes. In this paper, we present the first evidence on the composition of the top groups from the Belle Epoque to the early post-WW2 period. Using information on 21,055 individual tax-payers in two elite areas in greater Stockholm, we show that the absolute top stratum (the richest 0.1 percent) was dominated by an economic elite of CEOs and bankers, while a remarkably large fraction of the top 1 percent consisted of professionals such as medical doctors and engineers. There was a distinction within the elite between capital-rich “rentiers” and those affluent whose income came from wages and business. The incomes of the top stratum were built on the ownership or leadership of companies producing mass consumption goods, machinery, or banking and insurance. We relate the peak of income inequality in the first quarter of the twentieth century to the historical circumstances of a globalized economy with growing mass markets in all the industrializing countries. These circumstances, jointly with an economic policy that was still relatively laissez faire allowed great fortunes to be accumulated. In the 1920s and 1930s policy turned away from globalization and to stronger regulation, at the same time as steeper competition and growing unionization undermined the super profits of the previous quarter- century. Increased state interventionism in the economy and an expansive education policy also undermined the high relative incomes of professionals; we document the declining advantages of professions such as medical doctors, pharmacists, and lawyers when compared with the average income throughout the period

Social Democracy and the Decline of Strikes

This paper tests if a strong labor movement leads to fewer industrial conflicts. The focus is on Sweden between the first general election in 1919 and the famous Saltsjöbaden Agreement in 1938, a formative period when the country transitioned from fierce labor conflicts to a state of industrial peace. Using panel data techniques to analyze more than 2,000 strikes in 103 Swedish towns, we find that a shift of municipal political majority towards the Social Democrats led to a significant decline in local strike activity, but only in towns where union presence was strong. The strike-reducing mechanism is related to corporatist explanations rather than increased social spending in municipal budgets

Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State

We use historical census data to show that Sweden exhibited high levels of intergenerational occupational mobility several decades before the rise of the welfare state. Mobility rates were higher than in other nineteenth- and twentieth-century European countries, closer to those observed in the highly mobile nineteenth-century United States. We leverage mobility variation across Swedish municipalities to shed light on potential determinants: economic growth and migration are positively correlated with mobility, consistent with the patterns observed across countrie

Binary Coding Using Standard Run Lengths

Run length coding using standard run lengths has been proposed by Cherry et al [7]. Their analysis has been mostly experimental for specific types of data. In this thesis the globally optimum single standard run length has been derived for the binary independent source and globally optimum single standard run lengths of zeros and ones have been derived for the binary first order Markov source. It is assumed that the output symbols are subsequently block coded in each case. A recursion relationship between standard run lengths is derived for two specific coding algorithms. A simple single standard run length scheme using a non-block code on the output symbols has also been derived for the binary independent source.</p