Statistics
Finding statistical information is often tricky, especially if you want information from other countries than Sweden. In Sweden, statistical information has been collected since the 1686 law on parish registration, and in 1858 Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån, SCB) was formed. In the whole world, only Sweden and Finland have such a long continuity of centrally collected statistics.
Sweden’s Official Statistics
In print SCB publishes the series Sweden’s Official Statistics (SOS). In 1994 parts of SCB’s responsibility for collecting statistical information were transferred to a number of state authorities, who are now responsible for the publishing of their respective statistics. You can find an overview of the responsible authorities on the Swedish Statistics Net. In digital form you will find the statistics (SOS) on the SCB website in the statistical database. Here you can select statistics for a certain subject. Making large selections from the statistical database is difficult for capacity reasons. A special table management program called PC-AXIS has been developed to facilitate the managing of large amounts of data. Using this program you can process already existing statistical files.
Statistical yearbook of Sweden
SCB also publishes the Statistical yearbook of Sweden, with general contents, and in addition to that a number of specialized yearbooks in different fields such as agriculture, industry, education etc. You can download this book from the Internet or read it at tha Library.
Foreign countries
International statistics and statistics from other countries are most easily found in SCB´s collection of links for other statistical resources. There are for example links to international organizations such as UN, OECD, EU etc. There is also an alphabetical list of countries and links to their authoroties for statistics. You will also find some links for statistics in the Library web page.
The Library
At the library you can find Swedish statistics in print, e.g. statistics on education, population, agriculture etc. Most of the material can be found by searching the Library catalogue. See this example, agriculture statistics, and try this yourself.
Kent Pettersson
2005-06-22
