Volume 17 - Article 30 | Pages 897–938  

Childbearing dynamics of couples in a universalistic welfare state: The role of labor-market status, country of origin, and gender

By Gunnar Andersson, Kirk Scott

This article is part of the Special Collection 6 „Interdependencies in the Life Course: Family, Fertility, and Migration“

Abstract

This article studies childbearing dynamics by labor-market status of co-residing parents in Sweden. We apply event-history techniques to longitudinal register data on the life histories of foreign-born mothers from ten different countries and the partners to these women, as well as to a sample of Swedish-born mothers and their partners.
The context is a universalistic welfare state geared towards gender and social equality where formal social rights are largely independent of a person’s civil status, citizenship, and country of origin. We investigate the extent to which the associations of parents’ labor-market status with childbearing in Sweden differ between women and men and by country of origin.
We find that the patterns of association are fairly similar on both of these individual dimensions. As measured by the way the labor-market activity of parents is related to their subsequent childbearing, we find evidence of equality by gender and at least some evidence of integration of immigrants into the dynamics of Swedish society.

Author’s Affiliation

• Gunnar Andersson - Stockholms Universitet, Sweden EMAIL
• Kirk Scott - Lunds Universitet, Sweden EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Marriage and divorce of immigrants and descendants of immigrants in Sweden
Volume 33 - Article 2

Lives saved, lives lost, and under-reported COVID-19 deaths: Excess and non-excess mortality in relation to cause-specific mortality during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden
Volume 50 - Article 1

Disentangling the Swedish fertility decline of the 2010s
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Life-table representations of family dynamics in the 21st century
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Depressed fertility among descendants of immigrants in Sweden
Volume 36 - Article 39

Economic Uncertainty and Family Dynamics in Europe: Introduction
Volume 27 - Article 28

Labor-market status, migrant status and first childbearing in Sweden
Volume 27 - Article 25

High Suburban Fertility: Evidence from Four Northern European Countries
Volume 21 - Article 31

Cohort fertility patterns in the Nordic countries
Volume 20 - Article 14

Migration and first-time parenthood: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan
Volume 17 - Article 25

Understanding parental gender preferences in advanced societies: Lessons from Sweden and Finland
Volume 17 - Article 6

Educational attainment and ultimate fertility among Swedish women born in 1955-59
Volume 14 - Article 16

Education and childlessness: The relationship between educational field, educational level, and childlessness among Swedish women born in 1955-59
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Social differentials in speed-premium effects in childbearing in Sweden
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Fertility developments in Norway and Sweden since the early 1960s
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Demographic trends in Sweden: Childbearing developments in 1961-2000, marriage and divorce developments in 1971-1999
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Childbearing Developments in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from the 1970s to the 1990s: A Comparison
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Contemporary Research on European Fertility: Introduction
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