This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.The past 200 years have witnessed revolutionary changes in living conditions for most people in the Global North. While the broad outline of these processes is well known through extensive research at the macro level, we still know very little about their micro-level foundations, largely due to the lack of appropriate data in most countries. Through the lens of a Swedish industrial city, Landskrona, Urban Lives looks at economic and demographic change at the micro level of individuals and families to understand the societal transformations that profoundly changed people's lives during the twentieth century. These societal transformations--coinciding with industrialization, post-industrialization, and the emergence and culmination of the welfare state--encompassed groundbrea
When did Europe pull ahead of Asia in terms of living standards? A number of well-known scholars compare economic and demographic indicators of well-being in the pre-industrial period. The emerging p