Lund Papers in Economic History,
Lund University, Department of Economic History

Abstract: At the turn of the twentieth century, infant- and child mortality declined rapidly in many industrializing societies. In Sweden, this decline coincided with industrialization and urbanization, as well as a period of growing social disparities in childhood mortality. The inequality in child survival was connected to a range of factors, including access to water- and sanitation, housing conditions, infant care, and possibly nutrition. We study the importance of socioeconomic neighborhood context for under-five mortality in an industrializing Swedish town (1892–1939). We use individual-level socioeconomic and demographic data from population registers that have been geocoded at the block level and measure neighborhood conditions by the share of white-collar workers in the block. Cox models with time-varying block-level covariates to estimate the association between cumulative social neighborhood variables and the risk of child death. Our findings indicate that the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood was important for the risk of child death even when controlling for social class and family context. The association was present for both boys and girls and got weaker over time in the period we analyze. Social neighborhoods mattered more for infant mortality than for child mortality. In terms of causes of death, the associations were similar for airborne infectious diseases and food/waterborne diseases, while there was no association at all for other causes of death. These findings point to the importance of neighborhoods for child survival during the urban mortality transition and likely reflect both cultural and material causal pathways.

Keywords: Infant mortality; child mortality; neighborhoods; socioeconomic status; health inequality; urban mortality transition; historical demography; Sweden

JEL-codes: I14; J13; N33; N34; R23

Language: English

40 pages, April 28, 2026

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