CEDAR seminar with Gunnar Andersson and Glenn Sandström

Welcome to a CEDAR seminar with Gunnar Andersson and Glenn Sandström

Professor Gunnar Andersson, Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA)

Docent Glenn Sandström, CEDAR & Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University

Partnership formation and fertility decline in times of global uncertainties

Our project that started in the spring of 2024 is stimulated by unanticipated developments in family dynamics that appear to signal a “critical change” in childbearing and partnership behavior with potentially long-lasting consequences for Swedish society.

During the last decade previous relationships between economic cycles and family outcomes seem to have broken down due to newly emerging behavior among childless couples that cannot be explained by conventional factors of family change. The project sets out to find explanations to recent continuous and accelerated declines in childbearing and marriage formation in Sweden that have caused aggregate fertility indicators to reach recordlow levels and Swedish couples to embrace seemingly less committed modes of relationship behavior.

It sets out to evaluate new theoretical explanations for these changes by focusing on: 1) the potential role of emerging socio-demographic differentials in cohabitation, marriage, and fertility behavior, 2) the role of factors related to housing and the housing market, 3) growing gender disparities in educational outcomes and related couple dissimilarities, 4) changes in subjective relationship quality and 5) the role of subjective considerations for fertility realizations in post-pandemic Sweden.

All interested are welcome to participate. If you want to participate digitally, please contact Mojgan to receive a meeting link.