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Partner choice and intergenerational occupational mobility: the case of nineteenth-century rural Sweden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2009

MARTIN DRIBE  and
CHRISTER LUNDH
MARTIN DRIBE
Affiliation:
Centre for Economic Demography and Department of Economic History, Lund University.
CHRISTER LUNDH
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, University of Gothenburg.
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Abstract

This article studies the effects of marriage partner choice on occupational attainment and mobility in five rural parishes in southern Sweden between about 1815 and 1894. It uses an individual-level database containing information on a large number of marriages and the occupational origin of the marrying couple, regardless of whether they were born in the parish or not. Occupations are coded in HISCO and classified using HISCLASS. The results indicate the presence of occupational homogamy in this rural society. The social origin of the partner also mattered a great deal for subsequent occupational attainment and mobility, both upwards and downwards.

Le choix du partenaire et la mobilité professionnelle entre générations: le cas de la suède rurale du 19e siècle

Nous étudions ici, pour cinq paroisses rurales de la Suède du Sud entre les années 1815 et 1894, les effets du choix du conjoint sur la profession à laquelle on aboutit et sur la mobilité. Nous recourons pour cela à une base de données individuelles nous donnant des informations sur un grand nombre de mariages et sur la profession d'origine des futurs mariés, qu'ils soient ou non nés dans telle paroisse. Pour les professions, nous recourons au code HISCO, en les classant selon HISCLASS. De cette recherche, il ressort l'existence d'une homogamie professionnelle dans cette société rurale. L'origine sociale du conjoint exerçait aussi une forte influence sur le niveau de profession auquel on pouvait parvenir, ainsi que sur la mobilité, que ce soit vers le haut ou vers le bas.

Partnerwahl und intergenerationale berufliche mobilität: das ländliche schweden im 19. jahrhundert

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Auswirkungen der Partnerwahl auf den erzielten Beruf und die Mobiltät in fünf ländlichen Gemeinden in Südschweden zwischen ca. 1815 und 1894. Es wird eine Einzelpersonendatenbank benutzt, die Informationen über eine große Anzahl von Heiraten und den beruflichen Hintergrund des Brautpaares enthält, unabhängig davon, ob die Ehepartner in der Gemeinde geboren wurden oder nicht. Die Berufe werden nach HISCO kodiert und mit Hilfe von HISCLASS klassifiziert. Die Ergebnisse lassen darauf schließen, dass in dieser ländlichen Gesellschaft berufliche Homogamie bestand. Ferner spielte die soziale Herkunft des Partners nicht nur für die weitere berufliche Karriere eine große Rolle, sondern auch für die Aufstiegs- wie für die Abstiegsmobilität.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 24 , Special Issue 3: SPECIAL ISSUE: SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND MOBILITY IN HISTORY , December 2009 , pp. 487 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

ENDNOTES

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40 Models were also estimated for the full sample, yielding highly similar results (not shown, but available upon request), which shows that the results presented are robust to the narrowing of the sample.

41 Eriksson and Rogers, Rural labor; Christer Persson, Jorden bonden och hans familj: en studie av bondejordbruket i en socken i norra Småland under 1800-talet, med särskild hänsyn till jordägande, sysselsättning och familje- och hushållsbildning (Stockholm, 1992); Winberg, Folkökning. Similar results were also found in the Scanian sample using a broader socioeconomic classification based on access to land; see Dribe and Svensson, ‘Social mobility’.

42 See, for example, Long, Regression models, ch. 6.

43 In the sample used in the estimations in Table 7, 40 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women married homogamously and 26 per cent of men and 27 per cent of women married upwards, while 35 per cent of men and 32 per cent of women married downwards.