A review of policies and practices related to the ‘highest-low’ fertility of Sweden

Abstract

Swedish family policies are not directly aimed at encouraging childbirth. Their main goal has rather been to support women's labor-force participation and to promote gender equality. The focus is to strengthen individuals so that they are able to pursue their family and occupational tracks without being too strongly dependent on other individuals. The reconciliation of family and working life of women has been facilitated by (i) individual taxation and individual-based social-security systems, which makes it less attractive for couples to pursue gendered segregation of work and care, (ii) an income-replacement based parental-leave system, which gives women incentives to establish themselves in the labor market before considering childbirth, and (iii) subsidized child-care, which allows women to return to work after parental leave. Fertility has fluctuated during recent decades but, as in the other Nordic countries with a similar welfare-state setup, it has stayed well above the European average. The Swedish institutional context clearly is conducive to such "highest-low" fertility. In this review, I provide evidence that institutional factors appear to be far more decisive than cultural ones in shaping childbearing behavior, and demonstrate some specific impacts of family policies on childbearing dynamics. BackgroundIn demographic research, Sweden often stands out as a country of reference. This stems from the combination of two features. First, Sweden has been a fore-runner in the development of important aspects of family-demographic behavior, and second, it has some of the best demographic data in the world. The experience of Sweden is also of interest because it has been innovative in terms of policy development. In the 1970s and 1980s, changes in women's position in society motivated the introduction of a wide range of policies with the aim of achieving greater compatibility between women's family and working roles. Subsequently, public policies have focused more explicitly on men and their reconciliation of family with working life.It is very common to relate the relatively high fertility of Sweden and its Nordic neighbors to the setup of its policies and the characteristics of the Nordic welfare regime. The recuperation of fertility levels that occurred in the Nordic countries during the 1980s is often considered as related to the introduction and extension of various family-related policies. During the beginning of the 1990s, the then remarkably high fertility of Sweden attracted particular attention. The role of increased compatibility between female employment and parenthood in Sweden -and elsewhere in Scandinavia -has been stressed by a large number of authors, as witnessed by a long sequence of related publications during the last previous two decades: see, for example, Moen (1989), Sundström (1991), Haas (1992), Pauti (1992, Sundström and Stafford (1992), Bernhardt (1993), B. Hoem (1993, Ellingsaeter and Rønsen (1996), Rindfuss and Brewster (1996), Hoem (1996, 1999), Brewster and Rindfuss (...

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