Annually, the Swedish Demographic Association issues an award for the best thesis in the field of population studies. All high-quality theses at undergraduate or master level from a Swedish university are eligible. Topics should relate to population issues in a historical, contemporary or methodological perspective. Nominated papers are judged by a Jury on the basis of the following criteria:
- Engaging the relevant literature
- Written clearly and structured well
- Methods of analysis are appropriate for the research question and/or issues
- Theoretical framework is appropriate
- Interpretation of the results is effective
- Significance and contribution
Seven master theses were submitted to this year’s competition, and the choice of a winner was difficult, as all submitted theses were of a very high quality. Finally, the jury decided to award Tommy Andersson for the thesis “The Classes of Death: Socio-economic mortality differentials in Swedish cities during the harvest failure of 1771-72” which was written at Lund University in June 2024.
Tommy’s thesis investigates the historical socio-economic gradient in mortality due to economic fluctuations, using the harvest failure in 1771-72 in Sweden as an example. The author employs individual-level mortality data from eight cities in Sweden and aggregated population data from the Tabular Commission’s Mortality and Population tables to examine the extent to which socio-economic status was correlated with mortality in Swedish pre-industrial cities during short-term economic stress. The findings suggest that individuals with lower socio-economic status were more likely to experience a higher risk of death during the economic fluctuations of the harvest failure of 1771-72, providing evidence that supports the theory that the detrimental effect of short-term economic stress was linked to malnutrition and lower resistance to disease. The thesis builds on an extensive and thorough review of the existing literature and presents a sound empirical analysis and results that contribute to our understanding of the mechanism between short-term economic stress and population health in pre-industrial societies. In addition, the author showed commendable effort in discussing the study data and challenges in using such data, which benefits future researchers using the same or similar historical data. Overall, this is an excellent thesis, built on a sound theoretical, methodological, and empirical foundation.
We would also like to thank the jury for this year’s competition: Signe Svallfors, Wooseong Kim and Filip Dabergott.
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