Hard times in 19th-century Sweden: A reply

EXPLORATIONS

IN ECONOMIC

27, 114-121 (1990)

HISTORY

Hard Times in 1Sth-Century Sweden: A Reply LARS G. SANDBERG AND RICHARD H. STECKEL Ohio State University

Despite the critical tone of Johan Soderberg’s lengthy comment on our article, the fact is that we and he agree, or disagree only to a very minor extent, on a large number, indeed most, of the relevant issues. In order to focus our reply on the questions where the disagreement is serious, we will begin by listing, and thus hopefully clearing the deck of, the matters where no serious division of minds exists. At least as we read him, Sdderberg agrees with our conviction that data on human heights are a useful tool of historical analysis.’ More specifically, he accepts our results indicating a sharp decline in heights in “Western” Sweden (home to 62% of the population) starting with cohorts born sometime during the 1830s and persisting into the 185Os,* as well as our inference that these decreasing heights are evidence of a deterioration in the average net nutritional intake of these cohorts at some point(s) during their childhood or adolescence. Moreover, Soderberg agrees that the ultimate source of this net nutritional deterioration was population growth. By the same token, we agree with Soderberg that, by any reasonable criteria, times in Sweden were even harder in the late 18th century than they were in the middle of the 19th century.3 Finally, we agree with ’ Soderberg’s enthusiasm for the use of height data is qualified by uncertainty over who served in the military. Researchers in the field share this concern and sometimes label the issue the “basketball problem,” a term derived from the observation that the heights of the players in the National Basketball Association are approximately normally distributed while their average is many inches above that in the general population of adult males. In other words, one cannot use evidence of normality alone to draw conclusions about representativeness. Our research on the question for Sweden, based on comparisons of the heights of recruits with those of all males, will be reported at a later date. * By focusing on our Table 2, however, Siiderberg fails to note the clear decrease hr heights in Stockholm and the modest, but certainly detectable, declines in the East and North of Sweden that our U-year moving averages show occurred at least for cohorts born in the late 1840s. 3 Although it is not clear from the brief, and unfortunately worded reference to the 18th 114 0014-4983/90 $3.00 Copyright All tights

0 1990 by Academic Press, Inc. of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Soderberg’s conclusion that developments in Sweden during the middle part of the 19th century were laying the foundation for the succeeding decades of industrialization and rapid economic growth (see, Sandberg, 1979). As a matter of fact, we have noted elsewhere that, even including the downturn with which our article deals, mid-19th-century Swedish heights were impressive by international standards (Sandberg, 1989). Thus we must concede that our paper “one-sidedly” stresses “negative effects” (Soderberg, 1989, p. 488). On the other hand, however, it was never our intention to describe all aspects of Sweden’s economic performance or to render an overall judgment on the country’s failure or success. In light of all these major areas of agreement, what then are our important disagreements? In our view, they are two in number: (1) what, if anything, was the connection between decreasing heights and increasing child mortality rates?, and (2) by what mechanism did population growth result in a decrease in the net nutrition of children and youths in (at least) Western Sweden? We shall discuss these two issues in order. In our paper, we hypothesized that there was a direct connection between the reversal in child death rates that occurred in Sweden during the 1840s and 1850s and the, reduction in the adult heights of cohorts born during those same decades. That is, we believe that the child malnutrition that caused the decrease in heights also played a major role in the recorded increase in child mortality. Soderberg, on the other hand, reports that recent Swedish work finds little relation between nutrition and mortality rates. Thus his position is that the more or less simultaneous reversal in the upward trend of heights and the downward tren in child mortality is simply a coincidence, Since heights, and therefore, net nutritional standards, apparently deteriorated most seriously in the West, if there was a connection between net nutritional levels and child mortality, then child mortality rates should also, ceteris paribus, have deteriorated the most in the West. At the time we wrote the paper we unfortunately did not have access to any regionally differentiated mortality rates. This situation, however, has now been corrected. We have obtained age-specific data on deaths by age group, by county for much of the relevant period. These data are summarized in Table 1.4

century in our article (p. 6), Swedish adult heights were even lower for cohorts born at the end of the 18th than for those born in the middle of the 19th century (Sandberg and Steckel, 1987, pp. 107 and Sandberg, 1989). Furthermore, the downturn in heights recorded at the end of the 18th century was a more long-lived phenomenon than was the mid-19thcentury decline. 4 These data were compiled from the tables accompanying the S-year reports of Kongliga Tabeli Gommissionen published in 1828, 1838, 1844, 1850, and 1854.

All ages East West North Stockholm Infants East West North Stockholm Ages 1-4 East West North Stockholm Ages 5-9 East West North Stockholm

Age

108.6 125.5 88.8 239.9 37.2 39.2 23.4 75.8

37.8 26.3 18.5 46.7

Ill.9 112.2 96.5 242.2

1831/1835

121.3 98.8 71.0 193.1

113.0 107.7 92.2 252.1

1826/1830

163.4 159.5 188.3 299.2

111.1 107.3 95.2 191.2

1821/1825”

160.0 149.0 188.5 292.0

108.2 103.3 91.5 186.5

1821/1825b

Time period

43.9 36.9 25.2 84.0

125.7 122.5 105.8 335.8

167.7 156.6 179.8 336.3

113.8 107.7 101.5 219.4

1836/1840

TABLE 1 Death Rates” per 1,000 by Age and Region 1821/1825-1846/1850

38.1 38.7 19.6 60.9

110.1 110.7 75.9 230.9

152.3 146.7 158.0 313.4

107.3 96.4 83.3 187.6

1841/1845

47.3 39.5 20.4 79.3

142.3 121.9 81.4 349.0

153.2 146.7 141.9 310.1

108.5 101.7 81.2 193.0

1846/1850

35.4 34.4 24.1 82.6

34.1 33.1 25.7 76.7

21.7 49.9

28.4 24.5

26.8 22.0 18.7 39.1

33.4 30.0 23.2 57.9

17.1 39.8

27.2 24.4

21.6 21.7 14.6 20.8

24.5 22.4 13.7 39.4

Source. Tables accompanying the j-year reports of Kongliga Tube// Commissionen published in 1828, 1838, 1844, 1850, and 1854. These tables are available (at least) in the research library of the Central Bureau of Statistics and in the Royal Library, both in Stockholm. a Rates are the total number of deaths during the entire 5-year period divided by the average population during the time period. b Using population in 1825 as the base. ’ Using average population of 1820 and 1825 as the base.

33.7 32.7 24.5 64.3

East West North Stockholm

17.1 45.0

25.1 24.7

25.5 24.1

16.3 30.8

21.0 23.6 16.0 35.6

23.4 20.0 13.9 17.7

North Stockholm Ages 20-24

Ages IO-14 East West North Stockholm Ages 15-19 East West

s-4

2

3 2

3 Pi

ii .g. 5;

F ts

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Even a glance at Table 1 should convince the reader that the mortality that occurred in the l-4 and 5-9 age groups during these years was atypical. Instead of modestly improving after 1821-1825, as was the case with other age groups as well as with over all mortality, mortality experience in these age groups generally deteriorated. This was the case even in the early 1830s in the West, the North, and Stockholm, with the worst deterioration being experienced in the West and in the appallingly unhealthy city of Stockholm. In the East, no noticeable deterioration occurred until the late 1840s. It is our contention that this regionally disaggregated mortality experience for children under the age of 10, particularly the contrast between the two principal regions of the country, fits in remarkably well with our U-year moving averages of heights. After all, a reduction in human growth and an increase in morbidity and mortality are opposite sides of the same coin. As one falls, the other tends to increase (Sandberg and Steckel, 1988, Fig. 1). The second major disagreement between us and Sliderberg concerns the mechanism by which population growth (at least in Western Sweden) resulted in a deterioration in net nutrition for (at least) children and youths. Our hypothesis is that an increasingly unequal distribution of income overcame a modest increase in per capita (or per worker) agricultural output so that the poorer families, especially those with children, saw their per capita incomes decline. Soderberg’s alternative is that the growth of output was sufficiently large so that it prevented the increasingly unequal distribution from resulting in any such decrease of per capita incomes among the poor. In his scenario, however, the extra effort needed to keep such an income decline from occurring reduced the net nutritional level of the poorer families. SGderberg begins his argument by presenting estimates of trends in the percentage of the population living in “poverty.” These data come from several studies on Swedish 19th-century poverty carried out by Mats Lundsjo and by Siiderberg himself. The definition of poverty in these studies is that any adult (children are not included) lived in poverty if the local authorities had exempted him, on grounds of lack of ability to pay, from payment of the lowest of the various head taxes then assessed (kurhusavgifen-the hospital tax) (Soderberg, 1978, p. 196). On the basis of this definition, Siiderberg finds that between 1826 and 1851 neither in the West nor in the East was there any significant change in the percentage of adults living in poverty. A clear increase in the percentage of “poor” adults is registered for the North, however, resulting in a small increase for the country as a whole (Siiderberg, 1989, Table 2). There are, however, some serious limitations in using these results to draw strong conclusions about the incomes of the lower strata of the population. For one thing, the percentages are limited to adults (the

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problem of heights, of course, deals with child poverty). More generally, even if the income level that resulted in tax exemption was uniform in all parts of Sweden and constant over time, it would still only measure the number of people who were above or below this single income level. Obviously that percentage could remain stable while the condition of the low income strata changed significantly. In fact, however, the decision whether to exempt was made by the local authorities on the basis of their own current standard. There was uniformity neither over space nor over time. In his study of poverty in Southern Sweden, Soderberg asserts that this change of standards over time is not a drawback (Sijderberg, 1978, p. 14). He is no doubt right in the sense that poverty has always been a subjective notion. For purposes of the present discussion, however, this variability in standards must be viewed as a drawback. It is certainly reasonable to believe that the standards for tax exemption were toughened in hard times. In short, the “poverty” rates Soderberg has calculated cannot be viewed as sufficiently precise to deal with the problem at hand. Siiderberg’s next step is to present evidence on the rate of increase of per capita agricultural output. Although we agree that per capita agricultural output probably increased, “even in the West” (p. 16), Soderberg clearly has an interest in arguing for a relatively large rate of growth of measured output. He thus stresses the Martinius results which we also discussed, without, however, mentioning Martin Fritz’s criticism of those results-namely, that they are biased upward by a failure to take account of increased levels of purchased inputs (Sandberg and Steckel, 1988, p. 2, and Fritz, 1971, p. 612). Sijderberg continues his argument for rapid agricultural growth by citing the detailed work of C.-J. Gadd on some selected parishes in Skaraborg County in Western Sweden. Siiderberg claims that Gadd is less pessimistic than we are because Gadd found that “Food production per capita was in some investigated areas fairly stable from 1750 to 1855; in other areas there was a substantial rise in per capita production” (p. 483). He also notes, somewhat paradoxically, that Gadd found that “more grain and less animal foods were consumed” (p. 483). Since we agree that there probably was some increase in per capita agricultural production “even in the West” during, the period between say 1820 and 1860, we are at a loss to know why Gadd’s results are “less pessimistic” than our results. What is even more perplexing is that’ Gadd’s results for the more populous of the two areas where he investigated agricultural ontput levels (“five Ilatland parishes”) shows a slight $ecrease in per capita food production between 1825 and 1855 (Gadd, 1983, Table VIII:4, p. 137). Believing, falsely in our view, that his arguments have seriously undermined our explanation of falling heights (at least) in West Sweden as

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being the result of lower incomes per person in the median household containing small children, Soderberg wishes to substitute his hard work hypothesis of declining net nutrition. According to this hypothesis, falling incomes per unit of work effort in Western Sweden resulted in more intensive work on inferior land and on land improvement projects as well as more workdays per year. “Even if per capita food consumption remained at previous levels, it may have been insufficient to outweigh fully the growth in workloads” (p. 482). In order to explain how this “reduction in net nutrition due to more work” hypothesis came to affect height levels, Siiderberg argues that children actively participated in the harder work. The question then is; what age were these children? In order to contribute noticeably to work effort, they must for the most part have been teenagers, or at least very close to their teens. Indeed, to have a serious effect on final heights, the reduction in net nutrition, unless extremely serious, would have had to occur either when the children were much too young to work or else during their adolescent growth spurt. We have no problem in principle with this explanation. Indeed, in another context, one of us has put great emphasis on the relationship. among work effort, net nutrition, and height (Steckel, 1986). The question is whether the explanation is applicable in this particular case. Aside from the fact that Soderberg presents no data (other than his poverty measures) to support his hypothesis, we believe that it does not fit the timing of the recorded decrease in heights. If the reduction in heights was the result of harder work by the children themselves, then this increase in work effort must have occurred about a decade and a half after the shrinking cohorts were born. Since the drop in heights occurred in cohorts of the 1830s 1840s and 1850s this implies that the increase in work effort should have occurred starting in the mid- to late 1840s and then have continued with growing intensity into the 1870s. This does not seem to be in particularly good accord with Soderberg’s timing. The fact that mortality deterioration was concentrated in the age groups between 1 and 9 is also at variance with Soderberg’s hypothesis. The harder work argument, however, can be made to fit the historical facts better if it is somewhat adjusted. Instead of the children being negatively affected by their own work, this version would argue that the adolescents and adults had to increase their food intake to be able to do the harder work required of them. With the per capita food supply available to the household being essentially fixed, this, in turn, meant that there was less food left for the children who were too young to work. It is our belief that the empirical evidence currently available does not allow us to say definitely which story, our “reduced per capita income” hypothesis or Soderberg’s “harder work” hypothesis (at least in its

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modified “less food for young children” version), comes closer to the truth. Quite possibly, both effects played a role. While being able to evaluate the relative importance of the two mechanisms would certainly be interesting, it is our view that the distinction is not nearly as important as Siiderberg seems to think. Let us, for the sake of argument, say that Sijderberg is right and household incomes were maintained through large-scale extra work effort. In any case the result was a substantial reduction in the net nutrition and the physical growth of the median child, at least in West Sweden (where approximately 64% of all Swedish children under age 16 lived). Clearly these children and their families were worse off. Having to work harder to maintain the same level of consumption obviously means that a person’s true standard of living (as opposed to income level) has deteriorated. If the result is (increased) stunting of children, this is strikingly so. To claim that such an explanation of reduced net nutrition is “less pessimistic” than one based on lower per capita incomes with fixed workloads, as Soderberg does (p. 489, seems to us to be implausible. By the same token, this argument demonstrates how incomplete, and potentially misleading, is any poverty measure that is based on income alone, without regard for the effort needed to obtain that income. If poverty ,rates are to mean anything, or at least anything of interest, they must be a measure of human misfortune. When children have to endure a reduction in net nutrition, not only they but also their parents are bearing an increased burden of pain and suffering. REFERENCES Fritz, M. (1971), “Review of Martinius.” Historisk Tidskrif 34, 603-613. Gadd, C.-J. (1983), Jlirn och potatis. Jordbruk, teknik och social omvandling i Skaraborgs ltin 1750-1860. Goteborg: Ekonomiska-historiska institutionen. Sandberg, L. G. (1979) “The Case of the Impoverished Sophisticate: Human Capital and Swedish Economic Growth Before World War I.” The Journal of Economic History 39, 225-242.

Sandberg, L. G. (1989), ‘Swedish Height Trends During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in Relation to the Experiences of Other European Countries and the United States.” In J. Tanner (Ed.), Aaxology 88. London: Smith-Gordon 187-198. Sandberg, L. G., and Steckel, R. H. (1987) “Heights and.Economic History: the Swedish Case.” Annals of Human Biology 14, 101-110. Sandberg, L. G., and Steckel, R. H. (1988), “Overpopulation and Malnutrition Rediscovin Economic History W, ered: Hard Times in 19th-Century Sweden.” Explorations 1-19. Soderberg, J. (1978), Agrarfattigdom i Sydsverige under 1800-ta/et. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Siiderberg, J. (1989), “Hard Times in 19th-Century Sweden: A Comment.” Explorations in Economic History Xi, 477-491. Steckel, R. H. (1986), “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity.” The Journal of Economic History 46, 721-741.