ABSTRACT
Knut Wicksell was strongly convinced that Sweden was severely overpopulated. The overpopulation concept he used was that of relative overpopulation (see below), and he argued that Sweden was a case in point. He had good reasons. Already during the eighteenth century, the Swedish population had begun to grow more rapidly than before. In 1800, the total population was 32 percent larger than fifty years earlier. This trend would continue during the nineteenth century. After 1810, the number of births increased by about 30 percent to the mid-1820s (1806-10 to 1821-5). At the same time the death rate declined, especially among children. Between 1825 and 1840, the size of the group aged fifteen to nineteen years increased by 50 percent, which in turn resulted in mass emigration and colonization of northern Sweden in the 1860s (Hofsten, 1986: 164-75). Between 1858 and 1867, the number of births had increased considerably in Sweden, and the children born during that period had begun to enter the labor market toward the end of the 1870s – a period characterized by severe recession. The average number of births per family was presumably around four. At the same time, the mortality figure had declined, so that the number of surviving children per family had increased (Kock, 1944: 76-7). From 1850 to 1900, the total population increased from less than 3.5 million to over 5.1 (Hofsten and Lundström, 1976: 13).
