Incomes in Göteborg 1925-1958

The aim of this study is to throw light on why inequality in the distribution of income in Sweden fell from the mid-1920s to the second part of the 1950s. For this reason the project decided to collect income information referring to different years from a sample of households for one Swedish city. A database was created by coding tax records and other documents for the city of Göteborg, the second largest city in Sweden.

The determination of which years to investigate was critical. For analysing changes over time it was thought as essential to have roughly equal numbers of years between years studied. Further, it was thought advisable to avoid years with too much macroeconomic turmoil as well as the years of the two World Wars. Balancing the resources for the data collection between the size of a sub sample and the number of subsamples, it was decided to assemble data for four years. The years 1925, 1936, 1947 and 1958 was chosen to investigate. It should be pointed out that the year 1947 was preferred to the following years as large social insurance reforms leading to increases in pension benefits and the introduction of child allowances were put in effect in 1948.

Household is defined from registers kept in the archives (Mantalslängder). A household is defined as persons with the same surname living in the same apartment or single-family house. This means that there can be people belonging to more than two generations in the same household; siblings living together can make up a household as well. Foster children are included as long as they are registred at the same address. Adult children are considered to be living in the household of their parents as long as they are registred at the same address. In almost all cases, servants and tenants not belonging to the household are treated as separate households.

本研究旨在揭示瑞典收入分配不平等为何从20世纪20年代中期下降至50年代后半期。为此，项目组决定收集某瑞典城市家庭样本在不同年份的收入信息，并通过编码瑞典第二大城市哥德堡（Göteborg）的税务记录及其他文档，构建了一个数据库。

确定研究年份至关重要。为分析随时间的变化，研究人员认为各研究年份之间应保持大致相等的时间间隔。此外，还应避免宏观经济动荡剧烈的年份及两次世界大战期间。在平衡数据收集资源（兼顾子样本规模与子样本数量）后，项目组决定收集四年的数据，最终选定1925年、1936年、1947年和1958年进行研究。需指出的是，1947年被优先选择而非后续年份，原因是1948年实施了大规模社会保险改革，包括提高养老金福利及引入儿童津贴。

家庭的定义基于档案中保存的登记册（Mantalslängder）。家庭被定义为居住在同一公寓或独栋住宅且姓氏相同的人员。这意味着同一家庭中可能包含两代以上的成员；同住的兄弟姐妹也可构成一个家庭。寄养儿童只要在同一地址登记即被纳入；成年子女若与父母在同一地址登记，则视为居住在父母家庭中。几乎所有情况下，不属于该家庭的仆人和租户均被视为独立家庭。