Inkomstfördelning, strejker och industrialisering i Sverige 1870–1900: regressionsanalys med nya mikrodata

Sammanfattning: This study examines the distribution of income in Sweden 1870–1900, alongside with the historical labour strikes during the same period. The income data is extracted from old tax records at the National Archive of Sweden, and the dataset of historical strikes was created by the economist Axel Raphael by analyzing newspapers from this time. I have combined the two datasets, processed them accordingly, and calculated descriptive statistics, in order to execute linear regression analysis. The descriptive statistics shows that the gini coefficients decreased nationally, and in every county, but the coefficients from 1870 are not particularly well correlated with the coefficients from 1900. The results from the regression analysis show that the strike concentration in each county, controlled for by the gini coefficient from 1870, increased the expected values of the gini coefficients from 1900. This model is then further controlled for by the level of industrialization in each county, and this new independent variable proves to have been the underlying variable as to why the strikes correlated with the increased inequality. The level of industrialization maintains its significance in all models, with a positive b-coefficient in relation to the gini coefficients from 1900, and the mechanism for this result is quite plausible. These results are then discussed as a context for the situation in some of today’s developing countries.