SEDD is a high-quality longitudinal database covering five Scanian parishes (Halmstad, Hög, Kågeröd, Kävlinge and Sireköpinge) and the city of Landskrona. It spans the period 1646-1967, with full coverage of the entire population from c. 1815 for the five parishes, and from 1880 for Landskrona.

SEDD is unique in several respects. It covers a longer period than most comparable databases and has a wealth of information at varying levels of aggregation. At the individual level, SEDD combines various demographic and socioeconomic records, including causes of death, place of birth and geographic data on the place of residence within a parish. All individuals present after 1947, and a considerable number of individuals also before this date through links to the 1950 census and the Swedish Death Index, have unique personal numbers which enable direct links to the national registration from 1968 onwards (and sometimes earlier).

At present (2021), the database contains 175,000 unique individuals, and about 100,000 vital events and 300,000 migration events. The Scanian Economic Demographic Database is the result of project collaborations between the Centre for Economic Demography (CED) and the Regional Archives in Lund. SEDD is one of the databases in the national research infrastructure SwedPop funded by The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and partner institutions

Data is structured according the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS), which is an international standard for historical population databases. SEDD contains a large number of variables, which are described in the Metadata.

Example of variables:

• Births
• Deaths
• Cause of death
• Marriages
• In-migration
• Out-migration
• Birth-order
• Occupation
• Land holdings (farm size etc.)
• Type of residence (farm, croft, cottage etc.)
• Property ownership (freehold, crown, noble)
• Income

• Height
• Health at birth
• Health at mustering
• family and house-hold variables

For more information on the database, please click here.

Accessibility

Data from the Scanian Economic Demographic Database is freely available for research, subject only to legal restrictions for personal data and sensitive personal data.

For access, please click SEDD public access

Use of data for the period after 1920 requires a special application and decision in relation to GDPR and the Law of Ethics Review (Lagen om etikprövning). Requests can be made through SEDD public access

From 2025, SEDD data will be disseminated through SwedPop platform.