The rise of the middle class: the income gap between salaried employees and workers in Sweden, ca. 1830–1940

Abstract

We present the first comprehensive, long run salary information on Swedish middle-class employees before the twentieth century. Our data include, for instance, school teachers, professors, clerks, policemen and janitors in Stockholm and Sweden, ca. 1830-1940. We use the new data to compare the annual earnings of these middle-class employees with the annual earnings of farm workers, unskilled construction workers and manufacturing workers. The results show that the income gap between the middle class and the working class widen drastically from the midnineteenth century to a historically high level during the 1880s and 1890s. The differentials then decreased during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The bulging earnings advantage of middle-class employees vis-à-vis unskilled workers chimes with Kocka's depiction of the latter half of the nineteenth century as the era of the bourgeoisie. ARTICLE HISTORY

The Long-Term Effects of Student Absence: Evidence from Sweden

“…Western countries at the turn of the 20 th century; however, the first decades of the 20 th century were characterised by rapidly declining earnings inequality (Roine and Waldenström, 2015;Bengtsson and Prado, 2020). In particular the years around the elementary schooling period of these individuals have been characterised as an "equality revolution" (Gärtner and Prado, 2016) due to a sharp reduction in inequality.…”

A complicated puzzle: spinsters, widows and credit in Sweden (1790–1910)

“…In Uppsala, the situation is slightly different: several spinsters worked since the 1830s, but their number does not increase as much as in Gävle between 1890 and 1910 7 . This trend suggests that the increase in the number of spinsters as probate inventory holders was perhaps a consequence of both the general enrichment of the society – with the rise of the middle class (Bengtsson and Prado 2020) – and the already mentioned increasingly equal judicial framework from a gender point of view.…”

“…2018). The labour market and the socio-professional structure of society underwent a process of transformation that affected the ways in which individuals earned their wealth, and saved and invested it (Bengtsson and Prado 2020). These dynamics emerge clearly from the analysis of probate inventories, which, not by chance, contain the wealth accumulated by individuals in the course of their lives through their work, and that inherited from previous generations.…”

Workers’ access to Swedish opera houses and concert halls, 1898–2019

“…6 Only data for clerks in the private sectors—the same as workers—were collected. For 1898–1912, railway clerk salaries were used (Bengtsson & Prado, 2019 ). Socialstyrelsen (The National Board of Health and Welfare) published salary statistics for 1913–1972.…”

“…Base year 2020, 7-year moving average. Sources: Prado ( 2010 ), Riksbanken, Statistics Sweden ( 2020a ), Bengtsson and Prado ( 2019 ), Year book of wage statistics for Sweden, Socialstyrelse n (Wages 19xx) and Statistics Sweden ( 2020b ) …”