Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Working Paper Series,
Research Institute of Industrial Economics
No 1516: Cities and the Rise of Working Women
Thor Berger (), Mounir Karadja () and Erik Prawitz ()
Additional contact information
Thor Berger: Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS),, Postal: Uppsala University; Department of Economic History, School of Economics and Management, Lund University; CEPR; and Research Institute of Industrial Economics
Mounir Karadja: Department of Economics, Uppsala University
Erik Prawitz: Department of Economics and Statistics, Linnaeus University, Postal: and Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract: We document that large cities were instrumental in shaping women’s work and family outcomes in the early 20th century. We focus on migrants to Stockholm, Sweden’s largest city, using representative, linked census data. Female migrants to Stockholm saw persistent changes in work and family outcomes over the life-cycle. Migrants were approximately 50 percentage points more likely to enter the labor force and less likely to marry or have children than their sisters migrating to rural areas. They experienced skill-upgrading and higher real incomes, without adverse mortality effects. Early structural shifts towards services partly explain these patterns.
Keywords: Female labor force participation; Migration; Urbanization; Economic history
Language: English
80 pages, January 12, 2025
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