Volume 13 - Article 22 | Pages 559-572

Why does Sweden have such high fertility?


Date received:	18 Aug 2005
Date published:	24 Nov 2005
Word count:	3151
Keywords:	fertility trends, Germany, impacts of family policies, institutional effects, Sweden
DOI:	10.4054/DemRes.2005.13.22
Updated Items:	Minor corrections to Table 2 (German battery information) were made on March 10, 2006.

Abstract

By current European standards, Sweden has had a relatively high fertility in recent decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, the annual Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for Sweden undulated considerably around a level just under 1.8, which is a bit lower than the corresponding level in France and well above the level in West Germany. (In 2004 the Swedish TFR reached 1.76 on an upward trend.) The Swedish completed Cohort Fertility Rate (CFR) was rather constant at 2 for the cohorts that produced children in the same period; for France it stayed around 2.1 while the West-German CFR was lower and declined regularly to around 1.6. In this presentation, I describe the background for these developments and explain the unique Swedish undulations.