Historical Inequality and Mobility in Norway

On Friday 29 November 2024 Eirik Berger Abel will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Eirik Berger Abel, PhD Candidate at the Department of Economics and FAIR.

This dissertation addresses questions about inequality, intergenerational social mobility, and human capital, utilizing natural experiments to estimate causal effects. A key motivation for this research is the observation that Norway—and Scandinavia in general—is often viewed as a role model for equality and social mobility. Understanding the drivers of this uniqueness is crucial.

In Chapter 1, the authors examine the impact of increased schooling resulting from the 1936 Primary School Act on fertility and family formation. The article combines detailed archival data on the 1936 Primary School Act, modern registry data, and a causal strategy based on the differentiated effects of the reform. The findings show that extending the number of weeks in primary school reduces fertility, both through the extensive and intensive margin.

Chapter 2 explores how and why inequality in Norway decreased during the 20th century. The authors analyze the role of World War II in explaining Norway’s transformation from a society characterized by relatively large differences between people and regions to the egalitarian nation we know today. They show that the decline in income inequality was driven by increased demand for unskilled labor, which resulted in significant income gains for the bottom 50% of the income distribution in the early years of the war.

Three essays on conflict and ethnic tensions

On Tuesday 22 October 2024 Monica Beeder will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

High levels of intergenerational mobility are another cornerstone of Scandinavian identity. Chapter 3 shows that mobility started low but increased significantly for cohorts born between 1920 and 1940. Much of the reduction in historically persistent differences comes from the disappearance of urban-rural disparities for cohorts born after World War II.

Chapter 4 documents the construction of a new individual-level dataset on incomes from tax records from 1900 to 1970, which the authors digitized using machine learning. This dataset forms the basis if several chapters of the dissertation.