Sweden Demographics 1998
Population, settlements and urban network
The population of Sweden, which in 1998, according to an estimate, amounted to 8. 875. 000 residents, is unevenly distributed: in the three vast northern counties of Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Jamtland, the population density varies between 3 and 5 residents / km ², while four fifths of the residents live in the southern part of the country , south of the latitude of Uppsala, where industrial and tertiary activities and intensive agriculture are concentrated. Furthermore, the great majority of the population resides in the coastal strip, at a distance of less than 30km from the coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, on which there are the three major cities and most of the most important settlements. For Sweden 2017, please check mathgeneral.com.
Nearly 3,000 live in the urban agglomerations of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. 000 people, that is about one third of the entire population. Greater Stockholm, with 1. 605,500 residents (1998), is an administrative and functional unit that includes, in addition to the municipality of the capital, another 21 municipalities; the agglomeration of Gothenburg (more than 760,000 residents) includes 12 municipal territories; that of Malmö, or southern Scania (just under 500,000 residents), in the extreme south of the country, includes 9common. The trend towards urbanization, however, has been decreasing during the nineties, so the regions around the three major cities, and also those included in a radius of 20 ÷ 30 km from other important centers, such as Uppsala and Jönköping, they recorded only modest population increases.
The population has an annual growth rate of 5 (1990 – 98), higher than the average of EU countries, and a birth rate of 10.2 (1997), despite the fact that the original population is rather aged. This relative demographic vitality derives in fact from the currents of immigration from abroad, since in the last decade the Sweden also from Eastern Europe.
The Swedish rural settlement has undergone recent transformations, as has agriculture as a whole. Improvements to the communications network have enabled rural populations to access urban jobs and incomes, both industrial and tertiary. Urbanized countryside is defined by Swedish experts of socio-territorial phenomena as that space that is more than 30 km from a city of at least 10. 000 residents, and no more than 30 km from a medium-small town (between 2000 and 3000 residents). Instead the campaign includes all areas with no easily accessible cities, mostly mainly forest areas in the central and northern parts of the country.
Economic conditions. – The Swedish forest heritage remains one of the largest in Europe, with a production of 60 million m³ of timber (1997). In the last twenty years, the tendency to abandon agriculture in the northernmost regions in favor of forestry specialization has accentuated, which now occupies almost 100 % of the area used (about half of the forests are privately owned and in there is a high prevalence of part-time work).
The accession to the European Union (1995) accelerated some processes of agricultural reconversion, with a more decisive reduction in the number of farms and an increase in their size. Exports and imports have also been accommodated; For example, sales of typical Swedish food products to other EU countries and exports of forestry products such as pulp, paper and finished or modular furniture increased.
The specialized breeding is located in a south-eastern area, close to the main agricultural areas. According to assessments by the Ministry of Agriculture, full-time farms will shrink from around 35. 000 to less than 20. 000 in twenty years, while the number of part-time ones will increase, especially in the areas more accessible from major cities, where small businesses can more easily survive. After thirty years of productive increases per hectare, of mechanization pushed in the major companies and of a wide use of chemical products, agriculture and livestock gradually adapt to procedures more compatible with environmental protection and the farm is expanding considerably.
Among cereals, the production of rye (1.6 million q in 1998) and that of wheat have a good recovery, due to the increase in the production of wholemeal or semi-wholemeal flour products widely exported, while the production of wheat is decreasing. barley. Greenhouse horticulture and fish production (370,880 t of catch in 1996, between sea fishing and aquaculture) continue to expand, supplying the main urban markets, alleviating the strong import current. The breeding of cattle is stationary, with a slight increase in cattle (1. 706. 000 leaders in 1998). Reindeer husbandry, traditionally practiced until the 1970s by the Lapp people in the north of the country, has adopted technological systems, with radio links, snow scooters, helicopters for surveillance from above: the number of reindeer is slow growth (279. 900 units in 1994).
Although the Sweden is an important industrial country, rich in specialized production traditions, in the nineties the tertiary sector was now the dominant sector in every province. The engineering, automotive, aeronautical, chemical and woodworking industries are still solidly managed, with significant export currents. Some ‘global’ companies, with operational spread all over the world, are Swedish; they associate the activity of the secondary sector with the distribution-tertiary one, and decentralize the production with less technological content in distant places, or they reserve the design (as in the furniture factory, in the textile sector and in the electromechanical sector), while part of the processing takes place abroad, where labor costs are lower.
The relative territorial dispersion of industries, linked to each other by management constraints but no longer of unitary localization, and the increase in environmental priorities characterize the evolution of the secondary sector. Since Sweden is a strong importer of raw materials and energy sources and an equally consistent exporter of finished products, it is subject to the fluctuations of the international economic situation. The enlargement of the EU to some Eastern European countries, such as Poland or the Baltic republics, and the greater opening of huge markets such as those of the Russian Federation, China and India, are expected to bring competition to the South. but also great expansion possibilities for its ‘global’ businesses which are already being prepared through heavy investments in scientific research. However, the rigidity of the labor market and the significant social assistance burdens weigh negatively on the economy, although the services offered are efficient.
Mining production, famous for the excellent quality of Lapland iron (13 million t in 1996) and for the relative abundance of copper resources (also in Lapland, 71,700 t), lead and zinc, was in the past a stimulus for the specialized metallurgical industry. Today the mining activity of Sweden, equipped with advanced technologies, is imposing itself on numerous international markets: in fact, the Swedish mining companies operate with minority or equal shareholdings in Canada, Australia, Brazil and other countries of South America and the ‘Africa.
The road infrastructures are affected by the relative historical closure of the Sweden compared to Europe, but the growing internationalization and the accession to the EU have entailed strong need for modernization. Refurbishment works were carried out along the country’s main road route between Hälsingborg, Malmö (ferry landing from Denmark) and Stockholm.
The environmental problems, which are deeply felt, are holding back an excessive expansion of infrastructures (eg airports). However, it is expected that international air traffic, hitherto mainly concentrated in Arlanda airport (Stockholm), will also be routed to other airports. A grandiose bridge over the Öresund, between the metropolitan area of Copenhagen and that of Malmö, is nearing completion, so that the international conurbation of the strait can benefit from a stable connection, previously ensured by frequent ferries.
