Wealth, work, and industriousness, 1670–1860: Evidence from rural Swedish probates
This paper uses a new database of 1,891 probate inventories from rural southern Sweden from the 1670s to the 1860s to investigate the development of wealth and productive capacity in the Swedish countryside in this period. We show that while real wages fell in the 1700s, material living standards — as measured by the contents of probate inventories — improved, indicating greater labour inputs. Thi
