Despite a social environment that supports work-life balance and high levels of gender equity within couples, Sweden has experienced an “unexpected” fertility decline over the past decade. The recent fertility trends thus align with those observed in many other developed societies.
Stefano Cantalini, Sofi Ohlsson-Wijk, and Gunnar Andersson at Stockholm University investigate whether this fertility decline is also accompanied by changes in other aspects of family relationships, such as couples moving in together (called in the social sciences “cohabitations”) or the formation of new marriages. Using Swedish register data, which now includes better information on cohabitation, they examine trends in marriage and cohabitation formation in Sweden throughout the 2010s and past the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their findings reveal a continuous decline in first marriage formation since the early 2010s, with an additional sharp drop during the pandemic, followed by a slight post-pandemic recovery. This trend was consistent across groups defined by region of residence, labour market status, and migration background. The decline in marriage rates was also consistent regardless of how many children people had. Moreover, the drop in marriages wasn't caused by changes in the socio-demographic characteristics of Swedish men and women, including the number of children they have. While the gradual decline in first marriage rates during the 2010s still mirrors the fertility decline, the more drastic drop during the pandemic was a more unique development and linked to factors such as the inability to host large celebrations during that period.
In contrast, trends in the formation of new cohabiting couples have remained remarkably stable over the last decade, including during the pandemic, with striking consistency across different groups of women and men. The findings thus suggest that the fertility decline in Sweden during the 2010s was not attributable to a decrease in the formation of new cohabiting partnerships. Instead, the combination of stable cohabitation formation but declining first marriage and first birth rates indicate that Swedish cohabiting women and men have become increasingly hesitant to make further long-term family commitments.
Factors contributing to fertility decline – such as increased uncertainties about the future, changes in labour market structures, new information technologies, new modes of forming personal relationships, and related political and cultural polarisation – may also have an impact on the propensity to form marriages. At the same time, forming and remaining in a cohabitation union may be more compatible with a state of perceived uncertainties, as childless cohabitations require less commitment than marriage or parenthood.