Search

In this study, we examine the development of age at leaving the parental household in Sweden between the years 1830-1959. We utilize individual-level longitudinal data from two geographically and socioeconomically different regions: the county of Scania in the very south of Sweden, and Västerbotten to the north. We use descriptive and multivariate analyses to investigate how determinants, such as age at marriage and socioeconomic status, affected the age at leaving the parental household over time and between different subgroups, such as sex and rural-urban setting. We show that the age at leaving the parental household was initially low but increased strongly during industrialization but fell again during the interwar period and onwards. Regional and subgroup differences in age at leaving the parental household were small throughout the investigated period, indicating that the development was general in nature. Therefore, we argue that our results indicate that different models governed the structures and norms of home leaving during our investigated period. More specifically, a pre-industrial model gradually shifted into an industrial model, with the latter one becoming dominant in the 1920s. In the pre-industrial model, leaving home was shaped by the life-cycle service system. In the industrial model, age at marriage instead became a main determinant of home leaving., the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation, grant number MAW 2019.0029, Jan Wallander’s and Tom Hedelius’ Foundation and Tore Browaldh Foundation (P18-0130), the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (RJ) for the program “The Rise and Fall of the Industrial City: Landskrona Population Study”, grant number M15-0173:1

Human reproductive success requires both producing children and making investments in the development of offspring. To a large extent these investments are made by the parents of the child, but researchers are now looking beyond the nuclear family to understand how extended kin, notably grandmothers, enhance reproductive success by making transfers to progeny of different kinds. The extent to which kin influence fertility and mortality outcomes may vary across different socio-economic and geographic contexts; as a result, an international comparative framework is used here to sharpen our understanding of the role of kin in reproduction. This chapter assesses the role of grandmothers in fertility outcomes in a comparative historical demographic study based on data from Scandinavia and North America. The individual-level data used are all longitudinal and multigenerational, allowing us to address the impact of maternal and paternal grandmothers on the fertility of their daughters and daughters-in-law, while attending to heterogeneous effects across space and time as well as within-family differences via the use of fixed effects models. We discover broader associations of the paternal grandmother with higher fertility across the four regions. We also find a general fertility advantage associated with the post-reproductive availability or recent death of the maternal grandmother in the four populations. Important variations across regions nevertheless exist in terms of the strength of the association, the importance of the grandmother’s proximity, and the results derived by using fixed effects models. Our interpretation is that grandmothers were generally associated with high-fertility outcomes, but that the mechanism for this effect was co-determined by family configurations, resource allocation and the advent of fertility control.

Across today’s developed world, there is a clear mortality gradient by socioeconomic status for all ages. It is often taken for granted that this gradient was as strong—or even stronger—in the past when social transfers were rudimentary and health care systems were less developed. Some studies based on cross-sectional data have supported this view, but others based on longitudinal data found that this was not the case. If there was no gradient in the past, when did it emerge? To answer this question, we examine social class differences in adult mortality for men and women in southern Sweden over a 200-year period, using unique individual-level register data. We find a systematic class gradient in adult mortality emerging at ages 30–59 only after 1950 for women and after 1970 for men, and in subsequent periods also observable for ages 60–89. Given that the mortality gradient emerged when Sweden transitioned into a modern welfare state with substantial social transfers and a universal health care system, this finding points to lifestyle and psychosocial factors as likely determinants.

Recent regional studies on adult mortality and socio-economic status inSweden are merged and also completed with analyses from country-widecensuses in strategic time periods, with the purpose to find out whetherthe locally drawn conclusions about a changing social gradient in mortalitystill holds.The answer is firmly positive: While the upper classes have definiteadvantage in modern time (after, say, the 1960s), the reverse situationholds during the nineteenth and early twentieth century for men. Women, onthe other hand, seem to follow the expected pattern of a positive socialgradient through the last 200 years.

There is no consensus in the literature about the role of socioeconomic factors on influenza mortality during the 1918 pandemic. While some scholars have found that social factors were important, others have not. In this study, we analyzed differences in excess mortality by social class in Sweden during the 1918 pandemic. We analyzed individual-level mortality of the entire population aged 30–59, by combining information from death records with census data on occupation. Social class was measured by an occupation-based class scheme. Excess mortality during the pandemic was measured as mortality relative to the same month the year before. Social class differences in mortality were modeled using a complementary log-log model, adjusting for potential confounding at the family, the residential (urban/rural) and the county levels. Our findings indicated notable class differences in excess mortality but no perfect class gradient. Class differences were somewhat larger for men than for women.

The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and class schemes for each population, we examined the changing socio-economic differences in marital fertility and related these to common theories on fertility behaviour. Our results do not provide support for the hypothesis of universally high fertility among the upper classes in pre-transitional society, but do support the idea that the upper classes acted as forerunners by reducing their fertility before other groups. Farmers and unskilled workers were the latest to start limiting their fertility. Apart from these similarities, patterns of class differences in fertility varied significantly between populations.

The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and class schemes for each population, we examined the changing socio-economic differences in marital fertility and related these to common theories on fertility behaviour. Our results do not provide support for the hypothesis of universally high fertility among the upper classes in pre-transitional society, but do support the idea that the upper classes acted as forerunners by reducing their fertility before other groups. Farmers and unskilled workers were the latest to start limiting their fertility. Apart from these similarities, patterns of class differences in fertility varied significantly between populations.