Objective: This study investigated the association between individuals' economic situation and divorce among the population aged 60+ in Sweden, with a focus on the role of gender and potential changes across cohorts.

Background: Previous research on divorce has mainly considered individuals of working age or all ages combined, although late-life divorce is increasing in several Western countries. Economic considerations regarding divorce may differ for older members of the population, who often have a more restricted economic situation and fewer possibilities to respond to the consequences of a dissolution.

Method: Using Swedish population registers, this study investigated late-life divorce among cohorts born 1930–1956. Discrete-time event-history analysis was employed to study the relationship between income (recent and accumulated individual income, and spouses combined income levels) and divorce across gender and cohorts.

Results: For women, the results showed a shifting pattern from a positive to a slightly negative gradient of the two individual income measures for divorce. Men had an increasingly negative income gradient in divorce across cohorts. The results for combined income levels for couples corroborate these patterns. Late-life divorce has become increasingly linked to low income over cohorts.

Conclusion: The novel findings for older individuals mirror previous findings on trends in the general population, although those studies used other socioeconomic measures. As the association between income and divorce becomes increasingly negative among older women and men, and as the divorce rate increases, there is a growing need to understand different aspects of couple dynamics in later life.

Since the mid-1990s, the vast majority of fathers in Sweden have used parental leave, albeit for shorter durations than mothers. One major reason for fathers’ uptake of parental leave is the first reserved month, often called the daddy’s month, introduced in 1995. The reserved month is based on a “use it or lose it” principle, meaning that the month of leave is forfeited if not used by the designated parent. Since the 1990s, two additional reserved months have been introduced to each parent, resulting in a steady increase in fathers’ uptake of parental leave. Nevertheless, some fathers still do not make use of it. We investigate which fathers do not use parental leave and whether this has changed over time. The analysis is conducted with administrative register data of all fathers to children born in Sweden during the years 1994-2017. We especially pay attention to differences between fathers with different earnings, but also the association between the father’s uptake of parental leave and the mother’s earnings. We find that it is more common among fathers with the lowest and highest earnings not to use parental leave compared to other fathers. Over time, this U-shaped pattern has become increasingly clear. This pattern is not visible when considering the mother’s earnings, however. Instead, the likelihood of fathers not using any parental leave decreases when the mother’s income increases, and this pattern persists over time. The patterns of leave use are discussed in relation to the development of the parental leave insurance in Sweden.

Despite steady economic and social development in Bangladesh, women are in an underprivileged situation in many ways. This study explores the association between the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh. This study employs ordinary least squares regression, the ordered logit model, and the multinomial logit model, using Financial Inclusion Insights (2017) Survey data, to investigate the relationship between mobile phone use and women’s empowerment. The study’s main result indicates that mobile phone use facilitates women’s empowerment in general, but the impact needs to be considered for different groups of women. Housewives who are restricted within the household are impacted less than non-housewives by mobile phone use, contrary to our expectations. Also heads of households and spouses of heads of households, who are in very different positions in a patriarchal family structure, are similarly impacted by mobile phone use. This result implies that ICT only affects the empowerment of women who are not restricted to the household, and we conclude that ICT access alone is not enough to ensure women’s awareness about their rights.

Research on determinants of fathers’ parental leave use often focuses on fathers’ characteristics but leave out that decisions are negotiated with the mother. This study asks how fathers’ and mothers’ characteristics as well as their combination are associated with fathers’ leave use in Sweden, a country where parental leave sharing is encouraged. The results indicate that both fathers’ and mothers’ income and education matter for how long leave the father takes, albeit in gendered ways. Fathers with the lowest income tend not to use leave but if the mother also have no (or low) income, he will use long leave. Among middle-income fathers, a short leave is most common but if the mother has high income, they will instead use a long leave. Fathers’ and mothers’ tertiary education are positively associated with leave and two tertiary educations lead to a long leave rather than a short leave.

Objective: This study examines the extent to which the experience of parenthood worries among Finnish firsttime parents predicts the probability of a second birth, and whether the associations differ according to the parent's gender or the sufficiency of spousal support in parenting. Background: First-time parents' withdrawal from having a second child has been connected to declining fertility rates in Finland and many other high -income countries; consequently, more understanding is needed about why parents potentially refrain from subsequent childbearing. Method: We utilize longitudinal survey data collected from Finnish parents ( N = 544) in three waves (2016- 2020). Results: The results show that experiencing parenthood worries significantly predicts the probability of a second birth. Specifically, the accumulation of parenthood worries predicted a lower probability of a second birth, and each additional worry decreased the probability significantly more for fathers compared to mothers. Although we found no gender differences regarding the associations between specific parenthood worries and the probability of a second birth, our results showed that fathers who worried about loneliness or having sole responsibility for parenting were less likely to have a second child than fathers with no such worries. In terms of the sufficiency of spousal support in parenting, we found, first, that among parents who received insufficient spousal support, those who worried about their parenting skills adequacy had a lower probability of a second birth than those with no such worries. Second, among parents with sufficient spousal support, worrying about their own ability to cope was associated with decreased probability of a second birth compared to those who did not experience such worry. Conclusion: Our findings provide new insights into the potential influence of parenthood worries experienced by first-time parents and the role of spousal support in subsequent childbearing.

A major reason for the gendered division of parental leave use is the financial compensation during leave. Swedish national parental leave benefit provides 77.6 percent of earlier earnings up to an income ceiling, but collective agreements cover part of the income loss above the ceiling during leave. We focus on the importance of such collective agreements by examining fathers' parental leave take-up across the 2000s, as agreements were expanded during this period in time. We combine register data for the period 2001 to 2011 with the Longitudinal Integrated Database for Health Insurance and Labour Market Studies (LISA) being the key data source. The main division of agreements is between the state, the municipality and county, and the private sector. Results indicate that fathers with income above the income ceiling increase their use over the time period. Especially in the private sector a polarisation can be seen, where high income fathers increase their leave use, while fathers with lower income fall behind. As we do not find stronger increase in fathers' leave use in sectors where agreements expanded across time there is no evident support of a direct effect of the top-ups.

Couple relationships and money practices are intimately connected. Money can often cause disagreement and conflict within couples and represents symbolic values and expectations between partners. This study adopts a practices approach to exploring money practices among Swedish couples in the third age (60–80 years old) through 17 semi-structured interviews. We focus particularly on how money practices constitute and are constituted by dimensions of ‘being and doing couple’. We find that money practices both reflect and constitute couplehood. Our analysis has revealed that money practices are interlinked with couplehood through the primary themes of togetherness, fairness and trust, independence and finally, a reluctance to imagine oneself outside of couplehood, for other reasons than widowhood.

Artikeln belyser hälsofrågor i vårdnadsdomar meddelade vid svenska tingsrätter. Inom ramen av ett pågående tvärvetenskapligt forskningsprojekt konstateras att uppgifter om hälsoproblem och vårdbehov återfinns i många vårdnadsdomar. Hälsofrågor kan kategoriseras som de som i) rör barn i behov av somatisk vård, ii) barn med särskilda behov, iii) barn med vårdbehov till följd av akuta eller enskilda händelser, iv) barn med ohälsa till följd av bristande omsorg och/eller föräldrakonflikten samt v) föräldrars ohälsa. Rättens bedömning av barnets bästa skiljer sig åt för de olika kategorierna av hälsofrågor. Också förekomsten av tidigare vårdnadsdomar varierar mellan de olika kategorierna.

Immigration to Sweden is dominated by women and men of childbearing age, and many arrive with children. The labour-market integration of newly arrived mothers is of concern, and well directed social policy is crucial. Parental leave is based on residence, and until recently it was granted to all parents of foreign-born children of preschool age. This study uses population and social insurance registers to investigate whether newly arrived immigrant mothers use parental leave upon arrival, and whether use is an obstacle to future labour-market activity. Our results indicate that the majority of the newly arrived mothers do not take any parental leave, but also that there are great differences in uptake in relation to country of birth and reason for residence permit. However, there seem to be only marginal associations between parental leave use and subsequent labour-market attachment. Nevertheless, moderate use is associated with labour-market activity rather than being an obstacle to it. Our results contribute to the debate on the unintended effects of social policy on the integration of immigrants.

Swedish family policy is more or less completely gender-neutral and includes strong incentives for shared parenthood. Parental rights and responsibilities are not dependent on sharing residence with children, and cooperation on parenting is assumed also after separation, including the sharing of costs for children when children live mainly with one parent or in alternative residence. The state administrated maintenance support is only available in cases of severe conflicts between the parents. Otherwise, child maintenance is negotiated by the parents, and to a large part up to the parents’ discretion. Such arrangements work well in the majority of cases but when there is a parental conflict the recent legal development makes the situation precarious. This chapter maps out policies and regulations concerning parental separation in Sweden with a focus on the legal regulations of child maintenance. The precariousness for children and parents in instances of noncooperation will be discussed and how the present policy responds to such situations.