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. Purpose: 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

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. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att belysa varför ojämlikhet i inkomst minskade från mitten på 1920-talet till andra hälften av 1950-talet.

The local tax authorities kept a manual register of all persons registred as residing in the city of Göteborg. The register was started in 1917 and was in use up to 1967 when it was computerised. From this register it was possible to obtain a random sample (applying no age limit) by drawing persons who were born on two specific days of the year, and including members of their households. This master sample thus contains persons who were living in the city during the period 1917 to 1967. From this sample subsamples were derived for each year under study by selecting all persons in the master sample that lived in Göteborg during that particular year. This means that the samples for each specific year contain 2/365 (plus their families) of the people living in Göteborg during the specific calendar year. During the period Göteborg municipality expanded several times, in the database Göteborg is always defined according to the boundaries relevant respective year.