Local political assemblies often perform essential political and governing functions. We introduce the Swedish Municipal Council Database (SMCD), which contains information on municipal council size and the number of elected councilors by gender and party family over a period of 100 years (1919–2018). We describe how this new database enables novel analysis of the development of democracy.

This article studies the political economy of local politicians’ residential neighborhoods. We use Swedish data on the location of all politicians’ and citizens’ homes and their socioeconomic traits. A descriptive analysis shows that politicians live in neighborhoods with more socioeconomically advantaged residents and more of their own party’s voters. Next, we analyze whether having politicians in a neighborhood reduces the likelihood that new buildings are placed there, since these projects often generate local opposition. This analysis compares the neighborhoods of politicians with different degrees of political power and is restricted to close elections. We find that the presence of more politicians with governing power reduces the neighborhood’s proportion of new approved building permits for multifamily homes but not for single-family homes. The result is most likely explained by undue favoritism. We conclude that spatial political representation matters and that unequal spatial representation can increase geographic economic inequality. 

Prior studies have documented that working-class individuals rarely become parliamentarians. We know less about when in the career pipeline to parliament workers disappear, and why. We study these questions using detailed data on the universe of Swedish politicians’ careers over a 50-year period. We find roughly equal-sized declines in the proportion of workers on various rungs of the political career ladder ranging from local to national office. We reject the potential explanations that workers lack political ambition, public service motivation, honesty, or voter support. And while workers’ average high school grades and cognitive test scores are lower, this cannot explain their large promotion disadvantage, a situation that we label a class ceiling. Organizational ties to blue-collar unions help workers advance, but only to lower-level positions in left-leaning parties. We conclude that efforts to improve workers’ numerical representation should apply throughout the career ladder and focus on intra-party processes.

An understanding of differences in nonmonetary work conditions is fundamental for a complete characterization of individuals’ well-being at work. Thus, to fully characterize gender inequalities in the labor market, scholars have begun to explore gender differences in nonmonetary work conditions. We examine one such condition—meaningful work—using nationally representative survey data linked with worker and employer administrative data. We document a large and expanding gender gap in meaningful work, wherein women experience their jobs as more meaningful than men do. We then explore patterns underlying this difference. We find little correlation between women’s higher experience of meaningful work and either labor market decisions related to first parenthood or women’s underrepresentation in leadership jobs. Instead, the gender gap appears to be highly correlated with the sorting of more women into occupations with a high level of beneficence: the sense of having a prosocial impact. Though both women and men experience such jobs as more meaningful, women do so by a larger margin. Next, we consider the relationship between the gender difference in meaningful work and the gender wage gap, contributing to the discussion on compensating differentials in work amenities. We find that, whereas the gender gap in meaningful work closes a substantial part of the wage gap in lower paid jobs, it does little to close the gap in higher paid jobs in which the gender wage gap is largest.

We study a new driving factor of women's inclusion in politics: the economic empowerment of their mothers. We evaluate Swedish microdata on politicians and their parents over fifty years. The results demonstrate a strong intergenerational dynamic from mothers to daughters. Female politicians come from households where their mother is more likely to be employed, earns more in the labour market, and earns a larger share of household earnings. This pattern was strong among parliamentarians in the 1970s and 1980s when female numerical representation increased rapidly in Sweden but is not present in national politics after the introduction of gender quotas in the early 1990s or in local politics.

Prior studies have documented that working-class individuals rarely become parliamentarians. We know less about when in the career pipeline to parliament workers disappear, and why. We study these questions using detailed data on the universe of Swedish politicians’ careers over a 50-year period. We find roughly equal-sized declines in the proportion of workers on various rungs of the political career ladder ranging from local to national office. We reject the potential explanations that workers lack political ambition, public service motivation, honesty, or voter support. And while workers’ average high school grades and cognitive test scores are lower, this cannot explain their large promotion disadvantage, a situation that we label a class ceiling. Organizational ties to blue-collar unions help workers advance, but only to lower-level positions in left-leaning parties. We conclude that efforts to improve workers’ numerical representation should apply throughout the career ladder and focus on intra-party processes. 

An understanding of differences in non-monetary work conditions is fundamental for a complete characterization of individuals’ well-being at work. Thus, to fully characterize gender inequalities in the labor market, scholars have begun to explore gender differences in non-monetary work conditions. We examine one such condition—meaningful work—using nationally representative survey data linked with worker and employer administrative data. We document a large and expanding gender gap in meaningful work, wherein women experience their jobs as more meaningful than men do. We then explore patterns underlying this difference. We find little correlation between women’s higher experience of meaningful work and either labor market decisions related to first parenthood or women’s under-representation in leadership jobs. Instead, the gender gap appears to be highly correlated with the sorting of more women into occupations with a high level of beneficence—the sense of having a prosocial impact. While both women and men experience such jobs as more meaningful, women do so by a larger margin. Next, we consider the relationship between the gender difference in meaningful work and the gender wage gap, contributing to the discussion on compensating differentials in work amenities. We find that while the gender gap in meaningful work closes a substantial part of the wage gap in lower-paid jobs, it does little to close the gap in higher- paid jobs where the gender wage gap is largest. 

We study appreciation of one’s work using nationally representative survey data from Sweden linked with employer–employee data. The level of appreciation from colleagues rises sharply with the share of women in the workplace. This strong pattern holds for women and men workers, as well as for subordinates and managers. More appreciation from colleagues is associated with higher levels of job satisfaction and other indicators of worker well-being. These results demonstrate the benefits of workplace gender diversity and inclusion, and suggest new directions for research on gender inequality in the labor market. 

We study the politicians and voters of the Sweden Democrats, a major populist radical-right party. Based on detailed administrative data, we present the first comprehensive account of which politicians are selected into such a party. Surveys show that politicians and voters of the Sweden Democrats share strong anti-establishment and anti-immigration attitudes that drastically set them apart from Sweden’s other parties. Searching for individual traits that link naturally to these attitudes, we classify the universe of Swedish politicians and voters by social and economic marginalization and exposure to immigration. Politicians from the Sweden Democrats over-represent marginalized groups without strong attachments to the labour market or to traditional nuclear families, which instead are under-represented among politicians in all other parties. Among voters, the Sweden Democrats have higher electoral support in precincts with higher shares of the same marginalized groups. We see the mobilization of the marginalized as an important driver of the party’s success. Finally, we uncover that Sweden-Democrat politicians score lower on a number of valence traits than other-party politicians. In sum, the rise of the Sweden Democrats raised political representation for marginalized groups, but this came at a valence cost.