Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1942, Page 62
SWEDISH EMIGRATION TO AMERICA
By Hannes Hyrenius, Ph. D.
of the Swedish Statístical Instítute, Lund.
THERE is hardly any epoch in the history of any nation
in which it is not confronted by one or several population
problems, some of them of minor importance, or insigni-
ficant, but others so momentous that the continued existence of
the nation in question depends on their solution. This is true
not only of those European peoples which are relatively “young”
from a historical and cultural point of view, but also of such
older nations as those of Scandinavia, and among them again
it is applies with special force to Sweden.
The decline of the birth-rate which has taken place in Sweden
during the last decades, as in most other Western and Central
European countries, has brought in its train population problems
which will seriously affect the lives of generations to come,
though their gravity has only been realized in comparatively
recent times. Nowadays, a deliberate effort is being made to bring
about a lasting increase of the birth-rate, and thus to coun-
teract the threatening decline of the population. In this con-
nection it may not be without interest to recall that there was
a time, not very long ago, when the Swedish population was
subjected to a heavy drain owing to emigration to America, a
process which has in no small measure influenced the size and
composition of the present population, and the economic, social,
cultural, and political conditions under which it lives.
Between 1750 and 1940 the population of Sweden rose from
1.78 millions to 6.37 millions, corresponding to an average annual
increase of 6.5 per 1000. This increase does not, however, re-
present a continuous development, and does not correspond to
the real reproductive capacity of the population. The following
table gives a rough summary of developments since the middle
of the i8th century: