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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Malthusian checks in pre-industrial Sweden and Finland: a comparative analysis of the demographic regimes

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In this article, the existence of the Malthusian preventive and positive checks in pre-industrial Sweden and Finland are studied using demographic and economic data from circa 1750–1860. By applying time series analysis, we are able to identify strong preventive and positive checks for Sweden. The preventive check is considered to work both directly through births and indirectly through marriages. Although the Finnish data also indicate the existence of the preventive check, the positive check is only detected with differenced data. Our findings contradict the initial hypothesis that, due to poverty, Finland would display a higher sensitivity of mortality to living standards than Sweden. Instead, the finding of a pronounced marriage-driven preventive check in Finland casts new light on the macro-level determinants of the check mechanisms and on their connectivity to wider societal conditions.