The population of Sweden according to the new national atlas of Sweden

Summary

Michel Cabouret reviews the 1991 population volume of the National Atlas of Sweden, Befolkningen, edited by Sture Öberg and Peter Springfeldt and published simultaneously in English as The Population. Drawing on its account, he describes Sweden's 8.6 million inhabitants in 1990, low average density, and concentration of 83% of the population in agglomerations defined by Nordic criteria. He notes a low crude birth rate, a fairly high crude death rate, slow population growth and aging, alongside very low infant mortality and a recent fertility recovery. He traces the statistical record through fiscal sources from the late sixteenth century, church registers required in 1686, continuous centralized statistics from 1749, and the Central Bureau of Statistics established in 1858, emphasizing its value for studying demographic transition. The review surveys the volume's treatment of age structure, administrative geography, uneven population distribution, urbanization, commuting and migration. It also covers health, education, income and housing as human resources, household and partnership patterns, established and immigrant minorities, and population prospects. Cabouret praises the volume and highlights its departure from the conventional thematic-map collection through extensive explanatory texts, statistical tables, graphs and diagrams.