Erik Bengtsson () and Svante Prado
Additional contact information
Erik Bengtsson: Department of Economic History, Lund University, Postal: Department of Economic History, Lund University, Box 7083, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Svante Prado: Department of Economy and Society, University of Gothenburg
Abstract: We present the first comprehensive, long run salary information on Swedish middle-class employees before the twentieth century. Our data include school teachers, professors, clerks, policemen and janitors in Stockholm 1830–1935. We use the new data to compare the annual earnings of these middle-class employees with the annual earnings of farm workers and manufacturing workers. The results show that the income gap between the middle class and the working class widen drastically from the mid-nineteenth 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.
Keywords: wages; salaries; income inequality; middle class; Sweden
28 pages, January 14, 2019
Full text files
a7e9a738-ed00-4ef4-9d0c-4724d39b98df Full text
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Tobias Karlsson ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().
RePEc:hhs:luekhi:0186This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:16:07.