CED Seminar - Samuel Sundvall

Samuel Sundvall at Umeå University, will present a seminar titled:

SES or Region – Comparing the Demographic Transition in Sweden and the POPLINK Database (co-authors J Junkka, G Sandström)

Samuel Sundvall (umu.se)

Overview:

Changes in social and occupational structure – the shift from agrarian to industrial and service economies – were key drivers of the first demographic transition. However, it is unclear how much of the regional variation in the timing and pace of the mortality and fertility declines can be attributed to SES composition, and how much reflects within-SES differences in demographic behaviour shaped by local environments, institutions and cultures. 
Most historical studies either focus on SES gradients within regions or on regional patterns without explicitly separating compositional change from within-group change. This paper uses microdata from the POPLINK database to decompose regional differences in the demographic transition into components attributable to changes in SES structure versus within-SES differences. The POPLINK database, covering parishes in Västerbotten county, offers an ideal case for this analysis. The region industrialised later than southern Sweden, maintained a larger agrarian population into the twentieth century, and has been characterised as demographically distinctive - yet the sources of this distinctiveness have not been systematically analysed. 

The aim is to assess whether differences in SES composition are related to variation in mortality and fertility during the first demographic transition from 1850-1950, using a counterfactual comparison of the POPLINK Västerbotten population with national Swedish patterns. Thereby, we make two contributions. First, we provide a systematic demographic profile of the POPLINK Västerbotten population from 1850 to 1950, documenting mortality, fertility, and age structure relative to the national Swedish series. This establishes POPLINK as a well-characterised resource for demographic research and clarifies how this population relates to broader Swedish patterns. Second, we quantify the extent to which SES composition accounts for regional demographic differences during the first demographic transition