Education is one of the most important drivers of regional migration in European countries, and educational expansion has been a major social phenomenon in the last decades. We use decomposition analysis to examine how the expansion of tertiary education has affected intergenerational distance between adult children and their parents in Sweden. We use administrative register data for the complete population of Sweden and examine changes in intergenerational proximity between 1980 and 2010, using couples at the birth of their first child as the study population. An explicit policy goal of tertiary expansion was to widen the geographical access to tertiary education and the enrolment grew at newer regional institutions during this period. We additionally explore if this policy of regional expansion influenced average distance to parents. We find that intergenerational distances increased over the study period and that this was mainly attributed to the increased enrolment at traditional, older, universities.

In this paper, we analyze how school size and composition affect partnership formation in universities and in major programs within universities. Schools are commonly regarded important settings for partnership formation and matching in schools is an important explanation to educational homogamy. Yet we know little about which structural and compositional features of schools promote or dampen partnership formation. We analyze the probability of partnership formation in schools, namely the probability for a member of index cohort to have a partner with whom one overlapped in school with. Building on theories of marriage markets, we analyze the effects of school size, their sex ratios, and the age and ethnic compositions of universities on the likelihood of partnership formation. We use data from Swedish population registers for a cohort born in 1970. Our data includes the entire cohort and identifies the universities, and other students in them, which the cohort members attended. 

The goal of this study is to examine changes in the partnership formation of highly educated men and women over the period of higher educational expansion in Sweden. This study examines childbearing unions formed by highly educated men and women born in 1940-1942, 1950-1952, 1960-1962, and 1970-1972. Using binomial logistic regression, I analyze the likelihood for male and female graduates to form any childbearing union, and to form a union with a highly educated or a lower educated partner in relation to several educational variables. The educational variables considered are degree length (2-5 years), institution type (traditional and newer), income (predicted by program of study), and social class background. I find that in the birth cohorts studied, female graduates have become much less likely to remain unpartnered and much more likely to “partner down” in terms of education. Male graduates have been increasingly more likely to form childbearing unions with highly educated women. Higher status in terms of more prestigious education, higher class background, or higher income was generally associated with a higher likelihood of finding a highly educated partner—though some important gender differences exist. Additionally, the status indicators examined in this study do not appear to have become stronger predictors of partnership outcomes over time.

Over the last decades, women have outperformed men in higher education. Following this trend, women have also increasingly “partnered down” in terms of education. In this paper, we ask whether this trend for women’s educational hypogamy (“partnering down”) corresponds to other forms of status hypogamy, and whether the increasing prevalence of educationally hypogamous unions has accounted for changes in the status of women relative to their male partners across cohorts. We use Swedish register data and analyze childbearing unions of post-secondary educated men and women born in 1950-2, 1960-2, 1970-2, and 1980-2. We measure relative status according to social class background, income, and occupational prestige. Female hypogamous unions are only somewhat more female status-dominant than other unions. We also find that the status of women relative to their male partners over time has been generally stable in terms of the different status indicators measured, despite increasing female hypogamy. 

This study contributes to recent literature on childlessness among men by examining trends in childlessness among highly educated men in Sweden over a period of higher educational expansion. Though women outnumber men among graduates, the favourable partner market has not been associated with decreased childlessness among highly educated men. In this study, I examine how the field of study, sex ratio in educational institution, and income are related to the likelihood of childlessness among highly educated men over thirty birth cohorts (1945-1974). I find that men with technical oriented education, and men with lower incomes, are more likely to remain childless and that this pattern is consistent across cohorts studied. A negative association between birth cohort and childlessness emerges in a multivariate logistic model when differences in study experiences, income, and background variables are taken into account. This study thus suggests that compositional changes within the highly educated group are an explanation for the persistently high levels of childlessness among highly educated men.