Mark Magnuson | A Swedish dilemma | | A Swedish Magnuson Mark A Swedish dilemma Translating non-wage labor into a monetary pension continues to affect 2018:35 reproductive women, small proprietors and immigrants adversely. This challenge has its roots from over a century ago, as the Elderly Insurance Committee attempted to integrate Swedish non-wage smallholders within the actuarial sciences. The large number of smallholders in 1900 presented the state with A Swedish dilemma a dilemma that ultimately steered Sweden away from a workers insurance and towards a universal pension system. This book presents new insight on regional Aging during the search for a national insurance, 1884-1913 variations in rural nineteenth century elderly households that lay behind that dilemma, providing a more nuanced description of “traditional.” This study raises the regional role that ownership played in limiting the collective cost of elderly impoverishment, as well as adaptations in life-cycle strategies between Mark Magnuson mobile adult-children and their sedentary smallholding parents. I present this adaption not as isolated to households and families but as interconnected with a growing national communications and financial network. Innovative postal services, such as postal banks and mail order, assisted networks of solidarity, first with families as remittances and then as handlers of Sweden’s first pension checks. ISBN 978-91-7063-870-1 (print) ISBN 978-91-7063-965-4 (pdf) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences ISSN 1403-8099 History DOCTORAL THESIS | Karlstad University Studies | 2018:35 DOCTORAL THESIS | Karlstad University Studies | 2018:35 A Swedish dilemma Aging during the search for a national insurance, 1884-1913 Mark Magnuson DOCTORAL THESIS | Karlstad University Studies | 2018:35 A Swedish dilemma - Aging during the search for a national insurance, 1884-1913 Mark Magnuson DOCTORAL THESIS Karlstad University Studies | 2018:35 urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-68786 ISSN 1403-8099 ISBN 978-91-7063-870-1 (print) ISBN 978-91-7063-965-4 (pdf) © The author Distribution: Karlstad University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Department of Political, Historical, Religious and Cultural Studie SE-651 88 Karlstad, Sweden +46 54 700 10 00 Print: Universitetstryckeriet, Karlstad 2018 WWW.KAU.SE Table of contents TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................ 1 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 7 1.1 Rural household income before 1913 ............................................ 7 1.2 Prior research .............................................................................. 14 Elderly incomes ................................................................................. 15 Life-cycle income strategies ............................................................. 16 Land economy ................................................................................... 18 Spatial access to land as insurance ................................................ 20 Spatial variation in household structure ........................................ 23 Spatial cost variation ....................................................................... 25 Rural household debt, credit and inheritance ................................. 27 Formal and informal savings ......................................................... 28 Remote incomes and sedentary parents ......................................... 31 1.3 Aims and research questions ...................................................... 35 1.4 Disposition ................................................................................... 37 CHAPTER II: METHODS, SOURCES AND FRAMEWORKS ........................................... 39 2.1 Introduction: ................................................................................ 39 2.2 Limitations and source selection: ............................................... 39 2.3 Theoretical structures and nostalgic rhetoric ........................... 40 Ideological underpinnings ............................................................... 41 Conservatism’s hustavlan heritage ................................................. 43 Dilemma’s material framework ...................................................... 45 Tool chest ........................................................................................... 47 2.4 Case selection, defined variables and analysis: ......................... 48 Elderly .............................................................................................. 49 Households and families ................................................................. 50 Smallholders .................................................................................... 50 Incomes ............................................................................................. 51 Ecology .............................................................................................. 52 Analysis ............................................................................................. 53 2.5 Source quality .............................................................................. 55 Tabellverket ...................................................................................... 56 1 Spatial data .......................................................................................58 Committee data ................................................................................. 59 Emibas and migration registeries .................................................. 60 Savings bank registeries ................................................................. 60 Estate probate inventories and death registers .............................. 61 CHAPTER III: SWEDISH INSTITUTIONS AND NATIONAL SPACES ............................. 63 3.1 Introduction: A farmer’s folkhem ............................................... 63 3.2 Demographic factors ................................................................... 65 3.3 Rural household crisis................................................................. 70 3.4 Collective poor relief ................................................................... 79 3.5 Self-help savings as a collective assistance................................ 82 3.6 Limitations and expansion of banking institutions ................... 87 3.7 Wage income and the effects of building a national banking network .............................................................................................. 93 CHAPTER IV: REGIONAL VARIATION IN HOUSEHOLDS, COLLECTIVITY AND CAPITAL AMONG THE ELDERLY .................................................................................. 101 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................... 101 Prior cases ....................................................................................... 103 4.2 The Crown’s forested uplands and nostalgic households ........ 104 4.3 Regional household ownership, household retirement and collective solidarity 1805-1910........................................................ 108 Mapping ownership and welfare in Tabellverket, 1805-1855 ..... 112 Variation in ownership .................................................................. 112 Variation in household retirement contracts ................................ 116 Variation in poor relief ................................................................... 119 4.4 Tax districts correlation analysis .............................................. 123 Correlations within Tabellverket 1805-1855 ................................. 124 Correlations between Tabellverket and Elderly Insurance Committee ....................................................................................... 125 4.5 Aging parents, emigrant children and the Swedish Postal Service ......................................................................................................... 130 CHAPTER V: GRÄSMARK, VÄRMLAND ....................................................................... 137 5.1 Introduction: The people ........................................................... 137 5.2 Gräsmark as a case .................................................................... 138 5.3 Demographic ............................................................................. 139 5.4 The farm size ............................................................................. 145 5.5 The local economy ..................................................................... 146 2 5.6 Poor relief in Gräsmark ............................................................. 149 5.7 Availability of saving banks ........................................................ 151 Postal Service .................................................................................. 155 CHAPTER VI: THE ELDERLY AND ACCESS TO CAPITAL, COLLECTIVITY AND CHILDREN IN GRÄSMARK, VÄRMLAND 1880-1908 .................................................... 163 6.1 Introduction ............................................................................... 163 6.2 Households in two ecologies ..................................................... 164