Vulnerability among paupers: Determinants of individuals receiving poor relief in nineteenth-century northern Sweden

This study combines computerized parish registers with parish meeting records that account for individuals who received poor relief in the nineteenth-century Sundsvall region, Sweden. The combination of sources especially helps to explore the recipients who are overlooked in the literature or difficult to trace in historical data. Their demographic characteristics in relation to relief allocation and experiences prior to it are analyzed and show that they did not only share the occurrence of entitlement. Vast but insufficient family networks failed to give the recipients support to manage their distressed situation. Deaths and births of relatives jeopardized their capability to guarantee subsistence for them or their family, and so did also their gender and phase in the lifecycle. The multi-dimensional concept of vulnerability is employed to comprehend the dynamic determinants of poverty represented by individuals granted poor relief. It is argued that this concept has to be further developed but nevertheless helps to identify and stratify some of the vulnerabilities that characterized paupers in the past.