Too few children are born in Sweden and other countries in Europe and politicians in several EU countries have long tried to find a recipe to get the birth rate going and prevent a demographic catastrophe. In the public conversation, it is often talked about that women have pulled away from men in education and therefore would have difficulty forming pairs.
The mechanism can be completely dismissed. Highly educated women with high socioeconomic status have children to a greater extent than low-educated women. The trend has been strengthened in Sweden over the last 20 years, says Glenn Sandström, docent in historical demography at Umeå University, to TT.
Highly educated choose each other
Previous studies have shown that low-educated men with low income to a lesser extent have children. Based on data from the Statistical Central Bureau (SCB), which includes Swedish-born women aged 20-45, Glenn Sandström now lands in unpublished results that show that the same applies to low-educated women as well.
To some extent, women have also begun to be "penalized" in the partner market if they have low socioeconomic status. Men seem less inclined than before to form pairs with women who have lower education than themselves, says Glenn Sandström.
Swing took off with the 70s generation
In Sweden, a pattern previously prevailed where women with high socioeconomic status remained childless to a greater extent than women with lower education and income.
During the 1990s, however, a definite shift occurs, according to Glenn Sandström.
Both fertility patterns and relationships change noticeably among women born in the 1970s compared to previous generations. Higher education no longer means less willingness to have or start a family.
Over the last 20 years, the clear trend that took off with the 1970s generation has been strengthened. Today, the proportion of women with higher education than their male partner is actually greater than the opposite. Several traditionally male-dominated occupations, however, provide incomes near or higher than some female-dominated occupations that require longer education.
Not more unstable pairs
In the search for the answer to why today's young people do not have children, they are sometimes blamed for having unstable pair relationships. Not even that argument holds, according to Sandström.
Pairs are formed to the same extent now as we did in the 1990s and at approximately the same ages. They are not more unstable than the 1970s generation's pair formation in the 1990s, he says.
Young people born 1985-1990 and later move in together to the same extent as before.
The difference is that a significantly larger proportion of pairs now remain childless, says Glenn Sandström.
For women born 1940-1960, it was unusual to form pairs with a man with lower education and lower socioeconomic status than themselves.
The proportion of men who today have higher education than the woman in a pair relationship is 13 percent. The proportion of women who have higher education than their male partner has been around 22-23 percent over the last 15-20 years.
Of all pairs formed during the period 2012-2022, approximately one quarter were pairs where the woman was more educated than the man.
Today, about 60 percent of women born in 1995 have a university degree, while the corresponding proportion among men is about 40 percent.
The most common pair composition over the last 15 years is that both have a university education.
In 1984, it was most common for women to marry a man two years older, according to the SCB. In 2024, it was most common for women to marry a man of the same age.
Sources: Statistical Central Bureau (SCB) and Glenn Sandström, docent in historical demography, Umeå University.
