August 07, 2025 | News | Spotlight

The Skill to Lead Helps Men Form a Family

Leadership skills are an example of a psychological factor that can predict family formation over a longer timescale

Steffen Peters, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), used register data to predict the likelihood of young men in Sweden forming a family based on their leadership skills. He found that those with higher leadership skills at the age of 17 to 20 years were 10–15 percent more likely to be married by the age of 39.

Having Leadership skills are associated with having an average of 0.2 more children and a 10 percent lower likelihood of remaining childless by the age of 39 and above. © istockphoto.com/StefaNikolic

Leadership skills, in the context of servant leadership, can predict future family formation processes. In their paper, MPIDR researcher Steffen Peters and his colleague Kieron Barclay from the University of Stockholm demonstrate that young Swedish men with higher leadership skills in early adulthood are 10–15 percent more likely to be married by the age of 39. Furthermore, leadership skills are associated with having an average of 0.2 more children and a 10 percent lower likelihood of remaining childless by the age of 39 and above. These associations also hold true for sibling comparisons and cannot be wholly attributed to shared family background factors, such as genetics or parental influences. Moreover, this relationship is only partially driven by socio-economic status (SES) factors, such as education or income.

“It is particularly interesting that the effects of leadership skills in young adulthood on marriage and fertility in mid-adulthood are so clear, and that these effects persist even when family background and SES indicators are taken into account. This suggests that psychological factors, such as leadership skills, can predict family formation over a longer timescale”, says Steffen Peters.

Leadership skills have largely been overlooked in research

Leadership skills are typically associated with higher-level positions in hierarchical structures, which may provide access to resources to support potential partners and children. However, as with psychological factors in general, leadership skills have largely been overlooked in research on family formation.

“To the best of our knowledge, only one previous study has examined the association between leadership skills and fertility, and that study was based on a small sample of people from Finland. Our findings support the positive relationship between leadership skills and fertility”, says Steffen Peters. Building on previous research, the study examined a longer time period - during which family formation is often finalized -, investigated the correlation between leadership skills and marriage, and analyzed sibling comparisons. Furthermore, as the study provides information on the entire male population of specific birth cohorts, the selection effects that appear in research using survey data are not applicable here. “Psychological factors have huge potential to explain marital and fertility behavior”, says Steffen Peters.

Original Publication

Peters, S., Barclay, K.: Leadership skills and family formation among males. A study based on Swedish register data. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research (2025). DOI: 10.1553/p-kbjc-5fmn