Research project Rising social inequalities and Swedish fertility decline

Over the past decade fertility rates in Sweden have declined somewhat unexpectedly. This development has occurred in tandem with even greater fertility declines in the other Nordic countries. The projects explores why.

The fall in fertility poses a puzzle for demography since none of the factors commonly associated with fertility decline have been observed during the past decade. Our project aims at investigating these puzzling developments in more detail and to explore the factors that may drive them. We use collections of Swedish register data to study how the parity-specific fertility of women and men in Sweden have changed over the recent and current period of fertility decline.

We pay special attention to changes in fertility by birth order, socio-economic status, migration background and geographical regions in Sweden in order to examine whether social and gender (in)equalities are increasing, decreasing or shifting. We further investigate the links between labor market transformations and fertility development to understand their role in generating fertility decline and gender and social (in)equalities in fertility outcomes.

Our project also monitors the fertility development during the course and in the immediate wake of the recent Corona epidemic and examines how fertility developments are related to co-occurrences in cohabitation and marriage formation. The results are of high relevance, because all of these changes have major impacts on Swedish society, its welfare state, and the labor market.

Department of Sociology

Clear link between educational field and number of children

Individuals who pursue careers in health and education tend to have more children than those in other fields, according to a new study in demography. This is the case regardless of gender and education level.

No events available.

Cookie settings

By allowing third-party services, you accept their cookies and the use of tracking technologies necessary for them to function properly.