Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS); Uppsala University; Lund University; Lund University; Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN); University of London; University College London; University of Oxford; Stockholm University; Uppsala University; Lund University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050723000098
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 431-463
• 关键词: intergenerational occupational-mobility; UNITED-STATES; great-britain; opportunity; migration; industrialization; CONVERGENCE; INEQUALITY; errors; women

摘要

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 countries.