Wealth inequality in Sweden, 1750–1900†

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of wealth inequality in Sweden from 1750 to 1900, contributing both to the debate on early modern and modern inequality and to the general debate on the pattern of inequality during industrialization. The pre‐industrial period (1750–1850) is for the first time examined for Sweden at the national level. The study uses a random sample of probate inventories from urban and rural areas across the country, adjusted for age and social class. Estimates are provided for the years 1750, 1800, 1850, and 1900. The results show a gradual growth in inequality as early as the mid‐eighteenth century, with the sharpest rise in the late nineteenth century. Whereas the early growth in inequality was connected to changes in the countryside and in agriculture, the later growth was related to industrialization encompassing both compositional effects and strong wealth accumulation among the richest. The level of inequality in Sweden in 1750 was lower than for other western European countries, but by 1900 Sweden was just as unequal.

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

“…The bulging earnings advantage of middle-class employees vis-à-vis unskilled workers in the late nineteenth century chimes in well with Kocka's (1987, p. 7) depiction of the latter half of the nineteenth century as the era of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, our results also resonate with the mounting evidence showing that income inequality was very high in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in Sweden as in other developed countries (Bengtsson, Missiaia, Olsson, & Svensson, 2018;Piketty, 2014;Roine & Waldenström, 2008). In the final section of the paper, we discuss several factors that might have benefitted salaried employees relative to unskilled workers in the late nineteenth century, and place this discussion in the overall debate on historical inequality.…”

Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Germany, ca. 1300 – 1850

“…Recent years have seen a flourishing of studies on preindustrial inequality, which have added considerably to the amount of information available to explore the dynamics and the underlying causes of inequality change in the very long run. We now have good-quality, data-rich reconstructions of long-term trends in (mostly wealth, sometimes income) inequality for many parts of Italy (Alfani 2015;2017;Alfani and Sardone 2015;Alfani and Ryckbosch 2016;Alfani and Ammannati 2017;, Spain (Santiago-Caballero 2011; García-Montero 2015; Alfani 2017), Portugal (Reis 2017), the Low Countries (Van Zanden 1995;Ryckbosch 2016;Alfani and Ryckbosch 2016;Alfani 2017) and Sweden (Bengtsson et al 2018). Some of these reconstructions cover many centuries.…”

Unequal poverty and equal industrialisation: Finnish wealth, 1750–1900

“…In a recent study of wealth inequality in Sweden in 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900 Bengtsson et al (2018) argue against the strong focus on economic growth and industrialisation as drivers of inequality. They show that inequality grew from 1750 to 1800, from 1800 to 1850, and from 1850 to 1900, but in different ways: a bottom-driven increase (an increase in the number of very poor from 1750 to 1850 as proletarianisation reduced the farmers' share of the population); a top-driven increase (polarisation within the elite from 1850 to 1900); and polarisation driven by rural real estate as well as claims and investments.…”

“…They are thus a very good resource for studying historical wealth and its distribution (cf. Bengtsson et al, 2018;Kuuse, 1974). Unlike the 1800 wealth tax used by Soltow (1981), they include movables, and unlike for example the British probate inventories, they include real estate (cf.…”