Social Mobility in Sweden before the Welfare State

Journal article

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

Authors: Berger, T; Engzell, P; Eriksson, B; Molinder, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: The Journal of Economic History
• Volume: 83
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 431-463
• Publication date: 2023-03-28
• DOI: 10.1017/s0022050723000098
• EISSN: 1471-6372
• ISSN: 0022-0507
• Language: English
• Keywords: Demography; Demographic economics; Political science; Welfare; Economic mobility; Geography; Sociology; Social Welfare; Poverty; Social mobility; Economic geography; Economics; Census; Development economics; Welfare state; Leverage (statistics); Economic growth; Occupational mobility