The Industrial City and Its People: Summary and Conclusion

This chapter presents and discusses the main findings and conclusions of the volume and puts them into a broader perspective. Taken together, the different chapters contribute to closing the gap between historical studies based on parish records and contemporary research based on full-count registers or detailed surveys. The volume thereby fleshes out the narrative of twentieth-century demographic, social, and economic history by focusing on the individual level. This approach has rarely been taken in previous research over such a long period of time due to lack of high-quality micro-level data. The findings demonstrate how the behavior of individuals and families was conditioned by the larger societal transformations of the twentieth century; transformations broadly associated with industrialization, post-industrialization, and the emergence and culmination of the welfare state. The rise and fall of the industrial city had far-reaching effects on some patterns of behavior while leaving few traces in others.