MPIDR Working Paper

Erwerbsstatus und Familienentwicklung in Schweden aus paarbezogener Perspektive

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of men’s and women’s labor-market attachment in the process of family building in Sweden, taking the perspective of couples. Using register data for the years 1981 to 1999 we estimate event-history models for second and third births. It is shown that income and employment of both partners have a largely independent effect on the propensity to have another child. The effect is of similar size for men and women and points to a generally positive relationship between our employment variables and continued childbearing (which is contrary to assumptions suggested by the ‘New Home Economics’, for example). The finding that a traditional family context tends to hamper higher parity births in Sweden points to a relatively high degree of gender equity in that society.