Research group
Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA)
The Department of Sociology is home to the Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA), an international group of scholars and doctoral students, working on many facets of population dynamics. It offers a Master’s program in Demography and a PhD program in Sociological Demography.
What is Demography? In this video, our researcher Siddartha Aradhya explains more.
Photo: Mostphotos
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Photo: Mostphotos/Desislava Vasileva
Photo: Igor Stevanovic/Mostphotos
Demography is an interdisciplinary science that focuses on the study of the population, its size, composition and change. Populations change over time through the interaction of three central demographic processes: fertility, mortality and migration. In demographic research, this focus is expanded to include processes related to family dynamics, health and integration.
Demography is a quantitative science in which advanced statistical methods are used to analyze large data sources, often register data.
SUDA is home to an internationally competitive program of research and training. Much of the work we do is comparative, engaging data from countries throughout Europe and the rest of the world. In addition, the subject of demography at Stockholm University often has a sociological focus, in the sense that our research focuses on the relationship between population processes and various social, economic, cultural and political factors.
As evidence of SUDA’s success, demography has become a leading research area at Stockholm University. The unit maintains active links to some of Sweden’s leading research institutions, including the Institute of Enviornmental Medicine at Karolinska institutet (IMM) and The Department of Public Health at Stockholm University.
The Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) was established in 1983, under the chairmanship of Professor Jan M. Hoem. Between 2004-2013, the unit was headed by Professor Elizabeth Thomson and since 2013 by Professor Gunnar Andersson. Since 2001 it has been located within the Department of Sociology, at the University Campus at Frescati, Stockholm.
A lot is known about the inequalities experienced by refugees, but much less is known about their children’s lives. This project will study the inequalities that are faced by the children and grandchildren of refugees living in Sweden.
The project will provide understanding of how the family decision to take leave is conditional on expectations of the gendered workplace. It may provide new insights into how policy-making may benefit from a shift from the individual and couple to the workplace.
This research program addresses long-term change in relation to ageing at the societal level as well as applying a life-course perspective on ageing as seen from the individual level.
In our project we examine how changing economic circumstances may influence different demographic outcomes, using Longitudinal micro-level data for 1800-2007 for Sweden and Taiwan. A central question in demography is the degree to which marriage, fertility and mortality is influenced by economic cycles.
Over the last 20 years, the divorce rate has doubled among women and men aged 60 and older in Sweden, in contrast to the flat trend in the rest of the adult population. The project is examining reasons to and consequences of late life divorces on living conditions.
This project applies a life course perspective to study socioeconomic inequalities in terms of unemployment and income poverty dynamics between second generation immigrants and ancestral Swedes.
This project researches Nordic models of fatherhood and gender equality as hotbeds of welfare innovation and explores to what extent some countries are trying to ‘import’ similar models.
The project "Exposure to Swedish society and immigrant integration: The family formation of immigrants who arrive as children" brings together four researchers with extensive experience in studying the family formation of immigrants and their children.
This project examine why fathers working in occupations requiring the highest qualifications, such as medical doctors and lawyers, claim more than twice the length of father leave than those in occupations requiring the least qualifications, such as cleaners and machine operators.
Since 2010, fertility rates in Sweden have been declining. This development is rather surprising since Swedish family policies are internationally acclaimed for facilitating childbearing and childrearing. The researchers in this project seek to identify the factors that drive these developments.
This project uses register-linked data of the new Swedish Generations and Gender Survey 2020 (GGS2020)and its predecessor, the GGS2012, to compare changes in fertility intentions of Swedish women and men over the recent decade of Swedish fertility decline.
Will the decrease in possibilities to get child maintenance support lead to an increase in parental conflicts and leading to economic issues becoming more dominant in custody issues?
Are older adults dependent on a good relationship for their health and well-being? What are the correlations between health and well-being, economic hardship and gender equality among older adults living in relationships in Sweden?
Inequality in the length of life is the most fundamental of all inequality, but has been overlooked in the study of international migrants. For migrants, this represents a complex mix of their previous conditions in the origin country, the migration process, and current and often disadvantageous conditions in the host country.
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 Stockholm University SIMSAM Node for Demographic Research (SUNDEM) builds on the potential for top-class demographic research as provided by the individual, longitudinal, and spatial data available in Sweden’s population registers and the system of administrative registers that builds on the population registers.
The Swedish Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is part of an international data infrastructure, the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP). The infrastructure includes a register-linked survey of adults to which a contextual database covering their adult lives is matched.
One aim of this project is to produce a Nordic overview of research and statistics on the socio-economic patterns and cultural aspects of parental leave take-up by young parents under 30 years of age. Another aim is to examine the consequences of these patterns for gender equality in the labour market and in family life.
In a new study from Stockholm University and several US universities, the researchers found that children in the US aged 9-13 from different social classes spent roughly the same number of hours in front of a screen, on average. However, there were class differences in how the children spent their screen time and in parenting rules related to digital technology use.
In a new study, the researchers found large birthweight inequalities among the descendants of non-western immigrants compared to the descendants of Swedes. The largest differences were found in the third generation. The researchers warn inequalities may continue to widen in subsequent generations.
A recent study from Stockholm University investigates how immigrants’ childbearing – their age at first birth and number of children – are associated with norms and family support in their destination country. Is it easier for immigrants from countries with low fertility rates to achieve their childbearing ideals in Sweden, a country with strong support for childbearing and parenthood?
In a recent study researchers examined the relationship between a series of later health outcomes and family size in the sibling group that you grew up in, with a particular focus on ‘only children’ – children without any siblings. The researchers found that only children on average seem to do a little bit worse even after adjustments for other factors.
The Department of Sociology and Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) congratulate Matthew Wallace who receives this year’s Junior European Demographer Award.
Ann-Zofie Duvander is driven by the desire to contribute to the development of society. Trying to look behind what we see as “truths,” and find what needs to be questioned. At the same time, it is important to distinguish between research and political policy decisions, stresses Ann-Zofie Duvander, Professor of Demography.
There is a connection between armed conflict and violence in intimate relationships, according to a PhD thesis in Sociological Demography from Stockholm University. The study is based on data from Colombia and shows that the risk for women of victimization to violence from their partners or ex-partners increases in areas with higher levels of conflict. The study also shows that women in these areas are more likely to stay in violent relationships.
Gunnar Andersson and colleagues from Stockholm University and the Karolinska Institute have analyzed mortality and morbidity patterns in Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic in a report for the Swedish Corona Commission.
A new study from Stockholm University shows that occupation on its own was not linked to a higher risk of dying from Covid-19 in Sweden. However, older people who lived with adults in working age who could not work from home had a higher risk of dying from Covid-19.
We are happy to congratulate Helen Eriksson who receives 5,9 million SEK from Forte for her project "A family decision? Population studies of parental leave at the gendered workplace".
Language barriers or lack of institutional awareness do not explain why immigrants in Sweden have a higher mortality from COVID-19. These are the conclusions of a new population-based study from Stockholm University that analyzed intermarried couples--immigrants partnered with Swedes.
We are happy and proud to congratulate our researcher Rosa Weber who receives 2.4 Million Swedish Crowns from FORTE for the project Social Ties and Immigrant Integration: Bridging and Bonding Ties in France and Sweden.
What would Sweden’s population development have been like if it wasn’t for the uprising against Assad and the following war in Syria? A new study in demography published in the academic journal PLOS ONE has the answer. In the study, the authors have created and calculated hypothetical scenarios to determine the demographic development in Sweden and Norway – without the immigration following the Syrian war.
