Research project Tracking Gendered Wealth Inequality: Evidence from Sweden, 1850–1950
Why do women hold less wealth than men, and how deep are the historical roots of this gap? This project traces the gender wealth gap in Sweden between 1850 and 1950, a century in which women's legal position, family arrangements and markets changed profoundly.
Drawing on probate inventories, tax records, population registers and wills, the project builds the first individual-level database of women's and men's wealth across the whole period. Three questions guide the work: how women accumulated wealth, how property passed between generations through inheritance and marriage, and how women managed and invested their assets. By separating the wealth of spouses within households, the project shows how the state, the family and the market shaped women's economic agency. The harmonized database will be made openly available to other researchers.