Finland SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Saimaa, a system of interconnected lakes covering 1,000
square kilometers in eastern Finland
Courtesy Embassy of Finland, Washington
The economic and political transformations that Finland
has
experienced since the last decades of the nineteenth
century have
radically altered the country's social structure. In the
first
phase of this transformation, industrialization expanded
the
economy, created hitherto unknown occupational groups, and
forced
the old bureaucratic and clerical elite to share power and
prestige with a new entrepreneurial class. The political
transformation established a democratic republic in which
parties
representing workers and farmers successfully contended
for the
highest public offices. After World War II, the two
processes of
transformation quickened. In one generation, the manner in
which
Finns lived and earned their livelihood changed in an
unprecedented way. An essentially rural society moved to
the
city; farmers, for centuries the most numerous class,
ceded this
position to white-collar workers; and prosperity replaced
poverty.
Data as of December 1988
|