Urban–rural population changes and spatial inequalities in Sweden

Abstract

This paper documents regional population changes in Sweden since 1860 and investigates how these changes link to regional economic development (regional GDP). We combine long-term decade population data for the historical counties (1860–2020) with detailed annual population observations for municipalities (1968–2021). As industrialization picked up speed, this benefited regions all around the country in terms of production, at the same time as regional population patterns started to diverge. After a slowdown in the regional GDP convergence processes during the low-growth period of the 1980s, ‘double divergence,’ in both population and regional GDP per capita, has characterized Swedish growth patterns since the 1990s. Este artículo documenta los cambios regionales de población en Suecia desde 1860 e investiga cómo se relacionan estos cambios con el desarrollo económico regional (PIB regional). Se combinan datos de población de muchas décadas para los condados históricos (1860–2020) con observaciones detalladas de población anual para los municipios (1968–2021). A medida que se aceleraba la industrialización, esta beneficiaba a las regiones de todo el país en términos de producción, al mismo tiempo que los patrones regionales de población empezaban a divergir. Tras una ralentización de los procesos de convergencia del PIB regional durante el periodo de bajo crecimiento de los años ochenta, la ‘doble divergencia’, tanto en población como en PIB regional per cápita, ha caracterizado los patrones de crecimiento suecos desde la década de 1990. 本稿では1860年以降のスウェーデンにおける地域人口の変化を記録し、この変化が地域の経済発展(地域のGDP)とどのように関連しているかを検討する。我々は、歴史的な郡の長期的な10年単位の人口データ(1860~2020年)と市町村の毎年の詳細な人口観測(1968~2021年)を組み合わせた。工業化は生産という点で全国の地域に利益をもたらしたが、それと同時に工業化が急速に進むにつれ、地域の人口パターンの多様化が始まった。1980年代の低成長期に地域のGDPの収斂の過程が減速した後、人口と地域の一人当たりGDPの両方における「二重の多様化」が、1990年代以降のスウェーデンの成長パターンの特徴となっている。 This paper documents regional population changes in Sweden since 1860 and investigates how these changes link to regional economic development. In the literature on the topic, it has already been thoroughly documented that Sweden experienced a long period of regional economic convergence (in regional GDP per capita) during the post-war period, followed by regional economic divergence after about 1980. Sweden shares this trajectory with many industrialized countries (Enflo et al., 2014; Rosés & Wolf, 2019). Many explanations for this recent economic divergence have been proposed, including structural change and an increasingly sophisticated spatial division of labor, the effects of technological change, the introduction of two-earner households, and changes in social norms (Enflo & Henning, 2016). Analysis of economic convergence and diverge in terms of regional GDP per capita describe important but partial aspects of long-term regional economic change. How regional economic convergence and divergence link to changes in population across Sweden is not as well described, nor analyzed from a long-term point of view. While we know that urbanization was a dominant feature of Sweden's late industrialization and that there was a strong inclination for the economically active population to migrate into the expanding metropolitan cities (Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö) during the post-war decades (Schön, 2010), the details of regional population change and especially how it varied across time for different categories of regions and how it relates to economic divergence, has not been systematically covered. Nevertheless, the outcomes of the population change process are of great economic, political, and socio-economic concern: while the Swedish population increased by 33% in the 1950–2008 period, municipality growth rates varied between a 1,300% population increase to a 60% decrease (Holm et al., 2013). Declining municipalities risk a depletion of resources and negative cumulative economic spirals, while expanding municipalities risk overuse of local infrastructure and rapidly increasing factor costs. To create a longitudinal analysis of the regional population changes and spatial inequalities in Sweden from the 1860s to 2020 and analyze their determinants and links to regional economic convergence and divergence, we combine long-term decade population data for the historical counties (1860–2020) with detailed annual population observations for municipalities (1968–2021). Based on this data, we ask how regional population changes developed in Sweden during our investigated period, how have they varied across time, and how regional population changes and spatial economic inequalities have been empirically related across time. In the analysis, we find that, since the early 1900s, regional divergence has overall characterized regional population growth in Sweden – as the national population grew larger, the differences between regions have increased. Before 1910, the regional differences grew smaller, both in terms of population and in the production of economic value. As industrialization picked up speed, this benefited regions all around the country in terms of GDP per capita, but under the condition of a population that was becoming increasingly concentrated. After a slowdown in this process during the low-growth period of the 1980s, ‘double divergence,’ in both population and regional GDP per capita, has characterized growth since the 1990s. Smaller regions, and especially peripheral ones, lag substantially behind both in terms of regional GDP per capita and population. Two regions, in particular, forge ahead: Stockholm, with its top position in the urban hierarchy, and Norrbotten, with its vast natural resources. To the regional system at large, the double divergence effects are potentially problematic. In essence, smaller and more peripheral regions become less populous and relatively poorer production-wise. The last time we saw this was in the 1930s. We believe that such a mechanism is an important background to what some have called the ‘geography of discontent’ (McCann, 2020). In our time, this creates regional welfare challenges for policymakers that are very different from those posed during the post-war persistent growth period, where the regional system also diverged in terms of population, but where production was still regionally distributed in a more equal way to the benefit of the remaining population. How and why spatial inequalities vary across time (frequently analyzed as the processes of regional convergence and divergence), and how they are linked to economic change, are long-debated issues, from both a theoretical and empirical point of view. While mainstream neoclassic theory explains that economies have a general tendency towards equilibrium (such as in Solow, 1956) and that this also includes regional economies, a second class of theories, working in the traditions of Myrdal, Kaldor, and Pred but also Lucas and Romer's endogenous growth models, claim that spatial development is largely a process of cumulative causation and increasing returns. Such mechanisms make spatial gaps increase across time and prevent geographical economic equalization. Among the most powerful accounts in the last decades of how regional inequalities emerge and persist are those connected to new economic geography, pioneered by Paul Krugman (1991). It essentially states that the more regional integration processes continue (by means of, for example, improved means of transportation), the more pronounced the benefits provided to firms in core regions will be. The counterintuitive results from these models show how regional integration will not lead to convergence, as the main sentiments about the impact of communication technologies normally suggest, but rather to regional divergence and an economic strengthening of the core regions. Empirically, while localized assets and individual preferences may put restrictions on the divergence process, new economic geography models still seem to provide an explanatory framework for tendencies in our time of development (Krugman, 2000). Indeed, new economic geography has provided an important framework to explain why economic development becomes increasingly concentrated in a few places within countries at the very same time as it becomes far cheaper and easier to transport goods and information alike. In the wake of new economic geography, and partially as a response to it, evolutionary economic geography has elaborated further explanations for regional divides on the basis of primarily path dependency mechanisms but also learning and institutional change (Boschma & Frenken, 2018). In contrast to the focus on regional economic divergence in our time, there are also accounts that aim to explain the long-term empirical observation that saturation mechanisms over time tend to moderate (regional) cumulative causation processes. They eventually lead to a turning point, after which an equalizing process – including, among other things, migration – dominates (Williamson, 1965). In essence, these long-term accounts teach us that trends of regional development may shift across time, depending on economic, technological, and institutional factors. Also, new economic geography views have been fruitfully combined with a more long-term economic history perspective, where, across longer periods of time, the locational advantages provided by localized and fixed assets are complemented by advantages offered to firms in urban agglomerations with their rich markets (Crafts & Mulatu, 2005). The notion that relations between convergence and divergence are not static but change across time also links to empirical work on what type of agglomeration advantages are important to economic performance, and at which point in time. From a vantage point in a rather conventional view on agglomeration advantages, of which there are different variations – Marshall–Arrow–Romer (MAR)/Localization (specialization), Jacobs (diversity), and Urbanization (size) – Duranton and Puga (2001) as well as Neffke et al. (2011) show that the impacts of different types of agglomeration advantages vary across the evolution of a firm's activities, and across the industry life cycle. This recalls the spatial product cycle model (Norton & Rees, 1987; Vernon, 1966), which assumes that the location of in the development of a product over time, depending on the of and to While the time of such is relatively they still show that the in which different regions advantages to firms tend to shift with economic, technological, and institutional development. Indeed, of regional development are theoretical at it becomes more important to economic change and why it to the This has us to that there are of regional development and that those in connected to a geography of long (Enflo & Henning, et al., the of these & (Schön, The impacts of localized agglomeration regional path and patterns of convergence and divergence seem to within the economic, technological, and institutional of the spatial of are not but empirically In about regional convergence, divergence, and cumulative causation may all but at different in time and at different This is economies change across time, and they are also less we this type of long-term work has developed largely on regional production (regional GDP per capita) (regional per that where population as a The general tendency for this has also been to focus on the production while regional population and migration have been as an to the that changes in regional production, such as localized natural resources have migration and other changes of an not in the processes of regional convergence and While the model migration as an equalizing the new economic geography models migration as the basis of the economic about regional development (Schön, 2010), it is to that the migration also vary over the long and are linked to structural change and the of in that vary in their on the localized of production that are most important in In essence, the of are to regional in find in new regions, increasing in and make the regions more by the of is to such a process, of – the increasing regional factor that in in our of the of in Sweden and regional path dependency we find it rather that increased regional factor on a turning point in regional growth such turning processes of structural change in the and the introduction of a new of economic where the regional of production new of regional In with from on technological & and (Schön, 2010), we to the from some to some core production and which types of overall location patterns they in from a Swedish et al., & Henning, 2016). The time periods as overall but they a general of the The was characterized by a distributed growth in of the to and not have to by their of they to have This period into the early by the late with increasing of the of early Swedish which was on localized to et al., the new of economic change was still by a distributed growth grew across the as well as in relatively peripheral Also, it that this last well into the with cities of In well into the industrialization process, of with a very with a more in the very late and of the a of such as Stockholm, Gothenburg, and cities not the overall – the to also in smaller cities and peripheral on data from et al., After the industrialization in the the cities of and negative population growth for a the of and growth of from the the especially Stockholm, experienced a economic The most important turning point with the economic in the of the 1990s. and the some of the most important of the distributed and location of the While the metropolitan regions and some cities that local economies with for the have great economic since many regions have not the economic they in and it is that they While this is there are to the and of population at spatial and its regional as an of this not the and link to the longitudinal patterns of technological, and regional production changes documented far in the the different and spatial growth what population development To analyze the regional population in Sweden across time, we on of data from for the period we on population data from the Swedish We the historical (Enflo et al., We the population development over time and the changes in the of population. We also the changes in population of the counties with their economic across time and the of the data on the economic of the regions (regional GDP per we on from et al. and & also Rosés & Wolf, 2019). of changes in over time on the it is to create longitudinal population time to the on spatial at to create a more detailed of more recent in the spatial population we Sweden's longitudinal data, and we population development in about municipalities between and We describe the population In particular, we make of the of municipalities provided by the Swedish for where municipalities are into very municipalities to but municipalities and to and Also, we municipalities into regions, as analysis regions by the Swedish for and We a and path of analysis, on of in regional population development and in the time and analysis of the link between long-term regional population growth and regional economic analysis of cumulative effects by means of of the between regional structural change, regional and population the period that we the Swedish population grew from in 1860 to in to in of migration have during this period – from the of where more to Sweden about and a of the regional population changes during the period the population of national by geographical of the country population growth since the 1860s in the and the show in their shares of national population. The experienced a both in economic and population growth during the late of the for and but a population since in population in the counties from the The which includes Stockholm, increased its of the Swedish population from to at the of our investigated this the shares for the counties Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö) across the They increased their population shares substantially from the late with an period during the structural in the and on data from et al. and & on data from et al. and & In and the of of population in Sweden is for periods and regional – counties and municipalities The of is a – the the the the in the the a a more equal among the regions – in a time perspective, regional divergence and on data from et al. and & on data from et al. and & From an regional in the population between the regions in the late a long period of increasing differences in regional population the of the where it to a After that, from the population divergence process in Sweden In this perspective, the regional population divergence that Sweden experienced in the last decade is a of a process that has for more and is linked with the Swedish towards a rich welfare a more detailed of the of the Among the the period in the and in the data population convergence, followed by the The of the divergence process from by increasing the very of the This divergence of which spatial is for This with the of regional GDP per capita in that a and during most of the post-war the 1980s, production of economic become more distributed across the country since but with of population. This that, some of the population for population those in other regions still from a of across the such population divergence not of an economic – there are places on In and in our time, economic divergence in regional GDP per capita and regional population divergence these economic production of more as population. This means that the regional divergence process we is more the population divergence trajectory in the decades of the post-war 1980. on data from et al. and & from a to a more detailed it of to there are in terms of which regions have and which have from this long-term population divergence it the counties that cities that by of especially benefited from population it regions to up over time In the long and for the regions, it to a in the divergence process In the long since long-term tendencies of cumulative growth in terms of population, nor not in the long as well as counties have and overall regional growth for this period to have to with historical in the late – for growth for this is the vast of Swedish that industrialization where for growth rather a agglomerations agglomeration advantages to all of places in Sweden and not those that with but not all of the time. In a time and we a more detailed regional the and the time by the shift in regional development patterns of the as the becomes a different on data from Sweden on data from Sweden the period where there was a period of population convergence and economic there it to which of the municipalities that grew and which not While a has a negative it is on all Indeed, of both and negative population growth in all municipality become very different from there is a for the more populous The municipalities are more around a with a of and are with the period, of the municipalities the that are already This to a population divergence process since and in not by the very top municipalities in the regional system but the regional as a How these different periods of regional growth change the of the regional and are the regional tendencies to a more of for the Swedish regions for and the of we the of the Sweden has a for example, the of the second and the of the regional in terms of population also not change that an of are tendencies for a in the of the but it not the overall between and the to the growth in the of the and growth in the among the smaller regions. This to change the of the explanatory of a to in the regional system on data from Sweden our analysis has that regional divergence from a population point of view has in Sweden since the late a convergence period during the post-war divergence picked up new speed, especially with the of smaller regions towards the of the which regions are in we the regional categories of the Swedish for Analysis to how population shares across in different regional on data from Sweden The is rather metropolitan municipalities increase their shares from the late while municipalities more less municipalities with already shares As we have this is not a concentrated but rather a and the of our investigated the a new link between regional population change and spatial of This new ‘double will our main point in the The results are in As for the there is a strong and This link to the population of the and The results are more Before while and a regional convergence and there is that population per was linked to This our – that growth was in the of the second After there are of very convergence in the regional and but a very strong and growth as regions in this period in other top regions with and rich natural resources. In this we a of and regional to show that regional divergence overall characterized regional population growth in Sweden since the early – as the national population grew larger, and the the population differences between regions of population and regional population divergence have been some of the of Swedish as the country within less from an during the to of the industrialized countries in the We believe that, from the early the late 1980s, the spatial population inequalities not an of growth – they rather a that on and increasingly to within and the country as they is about the economic of the more population in Sweden of the We also show that, as industrialization picked up speed, this benefited regions all around the country in terms of GDP per This means that, while population was in the regional system the that to on in the regions further the economically This in a an economically type of population divergence combined with economic In the 1980s, this After a slowdown in the regional production convergence processes during the low-growth period of the 1980s, ‘double (in both population and regional GDP per capita) characterized growth Smaller regions, especially peripheral ones, substantially behind both in terms of population and regional GDP per This is the second time that we such divergence since industrialization – the last time was in the time between the In the period regional population differences and economic This was a time of economic and In particular, (Schön, 2010), and the link to population changes is We believe that this is of structural change, of agglomeration across time, as well as of natural economies may at have been important to the in but in the of local may in regions of relatively for example, and This also smaller regions to in the early early peripheral growth was more connected to localized resources to agglomeration effects (Crafts & Mulatu, 2005). In our time, in with the of new economic geography, agglomeration effects seem to benefit in the metropolitan and in the urban municipalities which of the regional have their in terms of population relatively well since the 1990s. in terms of economic production, divergence during the and early to the growth of the most regions – in particular, – with a in the and most peripheral regions. Indeed, we that cities with but not all of the time. regions also benefit in our time they are with natural resources that are in in the This is the for Norrbotten, with its the time of it to especially to regional population as the has learning it to the technologies of work and new have up to in this about the of geographical and of the same time, not since after the the We not know how this will patterns in and their to regional and It is but that population trends will As we have in this they have In it to provide a for regional population growth – it is that this by to structural change in the a focus on to and to as it from economic to the – and how this is by the regional of production but also by and technologies that have migration across time and migration In for it has been that, with many for and Sweden is among the top most in terms of geographical population this is not the – to the regional system at large, the double divergence effects that we are potentially problematic. In essence, smaller and more peripheral regions become less populous and relatively The last time we saw this was in the 1930s. While we that population divergence between regions is not a per se as long as it is with per capita welfare and development on with the of the the double divergence of our time us in the of an new of the ‘geography of In particular, we believe that it is important to development and structural change in more peripheral regions. While this of easier to the country as persistent The has also new work which with to to more peripheral that a of In a in and a local where peripheral regions in the national growth we find such but

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