New report: From Relatively High to Declining Fertility Rates: What Happened in Sweden?
Sweden was long regarded as a European success story for maintaining relatively high fertility levels. In this second English-language report in the Committee’s publication series, Gunnar Andersson, Professor of Demography and Head of the Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA), examines the causes of the recent decline and its implications for Sweden’s future. Läs mer
The report begins by providing a background to the situation that previously prevailed, where Sweden was distinguished by relatively high levels of childbearing, great similarities between different social groups in terms of numbers of children and childlessness, high rates of gainful employment among women, and a relatively high degree of gender equality in society and the family. Sweden’s family policy, with its focus on individual taxation of women and men, an income based parental leave system, and a well-developed childcare system, has clearly played a role in enabling such a situation, and the Swedish model for family policy is often held up as an example in international contexts, particularly in countries where gainful female employment and parenthood cannot be combined in the same way as in Sweden and the other Nordic countries.
The report then provides an overview of how the situation has developed since the period around 2010 and the research carried out to explain the entirely new trends of continuously declining fertility rates that have prevailed in Sweden since that time. This recent trend is by no means unique to Sweden; in fact it coincides with similar and chronologically synchronous declines in fertility rates in virtually all high- and middle-income countries, regardless of their previous fertility rates and the structures in these fertility rates.
This behavioural change can be entirely attributed to a reduced inclination to become a parent. It is not about a general trend towards having fewer children. If a person decides to have their first child, their inclination to have a second and third child is roughly the same as before. The decline in first-birth rates has occurred to a very similar extent among people in different socio-economic groups and among those living in different types of residential areas in Sweden. Nor is the decline due to a reduced inclination to form cohabiting couples. Instead, it is among cohabiting couples that there is a reduced tendency to make long-term commitments, such as becoming parents or getting married. Structural factors are no longer sufficient to explain the recent changes in behaviour among childless cohabiting couples. Instead, the focus must be directed towards more subjective explanatory factors that are operating at a general, global level according to Gunnar.
