Sweden's marriage revival: An analysis of the new-millennium switch from long-term decline to increasing popularity

Abstract

Usually seen as a forerunner in the development of new trends in family-demographic behaviour, Sweden has recently experienced a reversal in marriage trends, from a steady decline in marriage rate between the 1960s and 1990s, to a steady increase beginning in 1998. An event-history analysis of women's first marriages in the period 1991–2007, using register data, shows that compositional changes in labour-market activity and childbearing can only partly explain the reversal, and that apparently no part of it is explained by compositional changes in age, country of birth, educational level, and type of settlement. The evidence suggests that the popularity of marriage in Sweden is increasing, in contrast to what might be expected from the way demographic trends in Sweden and other Western countries are often portrayed in the literature.

Keywords:

• marriage
• marriage trend
• childbearing
• cohabitation
• Sweden
• register data
• event-history analysis

Notes

1. Sofi Ohlsson-Wijk is at the Demography Unit (SUDA), Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, SE-106-91 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]

2. This work has been conducted as part of the project ‘Register-Based Research in Nordic Demography’, financed by the Swedish Research Council. I am grateful to Gunnar Andersson and Elizabeth Thomson for valuable advice on my work in this study. I also thank Gerda Neyer and Maria Brandén for helpful comments. Finally, this paper has benefited very much from the constructive suggestions of an anonymous reviewer.