Environmental concerns may influence personal fertility decisions and general opinions about childbearing and population dynamics, but research on this topic remains scarce. In two analyses based on large Swedish datasets (the Gender and Generation Survey [GGS], N = 8027, and a survey designed for this project, N = 683), we examine the connection between climate change worry and fertility outcomes and compare the prevalence of various concerns, behaviors, and opinions about the environment, childbearing, and population. We find little evidence that environmental concerns have a notable connection with fertility outcomes, but many people perceive a link between childbearing and environmental problems. Most respondents think environmental considerations should influence people’s decisions to have children—based on considerations regarding both the hypothetical child’s future life conditions and the potential environmental impacts of childbearing—and see global population growth as a problem. A substantial minority thinks that measures should be introduced to limit population size, both domestically and in developing countries. We examine how such eco-reproductive concerns and behaviors vary with key demographic and psychological factors emphasized in previous research on fertility and/or environmentalism. The findings showed that eco-reproductive concerns correlate with attitudinal variables (climate change worry, less climate change denial, conservative attitudes, and low political trust), while eco-reproductive behavior is linked with other forms of environmental behaviors and with life circumstances (being younger, not being in a relationship). Our main conclusion is that environmental considerations are influencing views on population and childbearing, but we see no clear evidence of their impact on childbearing decisions in Sweden.

Research has shown that married individuals live longer lives than unmarried women and men. A smaller number of studies have included non-marital cohabitation and have found that their mortality falls between the married and other unmarried groups. There are indications that the cohabiting population is diverse in terms of mortality risk, yet very little is known about how the association is related to age and stages of the life course. Sweden is a forerunner in family trends, and this is the first study that examines cohabitation and mortality in a Swedish context. Using Swedish register data for the years 2012–2017, we investigated how different partnership statuses are related to mortality for men and women at different ages (N = 5,572,011). We also examine whether the association between cohabitation and mortality is similar after accounting for family-of-origin effects through the use of a sibling comparison design. Our findings confirmed the notion of cohabiters as a diverse group whose relative mortality risk differs depending on the timing of cohabitation. Never-married cohabiters had a mortality risk similar to married couples at younger ages and a gradually increased risk with age. Divorced and widowed cohabiters exhibited an age gradient in the opposite direction. Future research should consider how the context of cohabitation changes across the life course.

Divorce among older adults has increased in many Western countries, even as rates among younger individuals have stabilized or declined. This study examines trends in late-life divorce in Sweden, a country that has undergone significant changes in family life and union stability throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. We focus on individuals aged 60 and older, using Swedish register data from 2000 to 2022 for cohorts born between 1940 and 1960. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to visualize divorce trends by sex and age groups, and event history models assessed how marital duration, higher order marriages, and educational attainment influenced divorce risk across cohorts. Our findings reveal a modest increase in divorce after age 60 over time. Individuals in higher order marriages and those with shorter marital durations faced a higher risk of divorce. We also observed changing educational patterns: Earlier cohorts showed higher divorce risks among women with higher education levels, whereas in more recent cohorts, those with lower education levels had an increased divorce risk. These results suggest that the rise in late-life divorce in Sweden is partly driven by the growing proportion of shorter marriages, greater instability in higher order marriages, and shifting associations with educational attainment across cohorts.

Background: Religion and religiosity are known as important determinants of health and mortality. Previous studies on the interrelation between religion and mortality have relied on survey data and have mainly been carried out in a North American setting.

Objective: We provide a register-based study of life expectancy by religious affiliation for a total national population over the course of five decades.

Methods: We calculate life expectancy by religious affiliation, using register data on the entire population of Finland for the period 1972–2020. Calculations are made separately for men and women born in Finland and abroad. We use administrative longitudinal annual data on each person’s religious denomination, as registered by the Finnish government.

Results: Orthodox Christians have up to two years shorter life expectancy than members of the Evangelical Lutheran State Church, while people of other religions have up to four years longer life expectancy. Non-affiliated persons have about one-year shorter life expectancy than Evangelical Lutherans, but the difference has decreased over time, and they currently are at a similar level. The pattern of life expectancy is similar for the native- and foreign-born, but sex differences are more pronounced among the latter.

Conclusions: Religious affiliation as measured by population register data is an important determinant of life expectancy.

Contribution: This is the first study of life expectancy by religious affiliation based on population register data for an entire country. We find substantive differences across religious denominations, even in the secular context of Finland.

Parentalization, or becoming a parent and being legally and socially recognized as such, has long been constrained for sexual minorities. Although many studies have examined the outcomes of children of same-sex couples, relatively less attention has been paid to researching parents in same-sex unions themselves. In Sweden, changing policy and social contexts have successively eased many disparities in access to parenthood for sexual minorities. Analyzing 27 years of Swedish administrative register data starting from the legal recognition of same-sex unions in 1995, we examined time trends in the prevalence of parenthood (coresidence with children under 18) and the sociodemographic characteristics of people with versus without coresident children in same- versus different-sex legal unions. We expected to document considerable changes over time as policy contexts, parentalization disparities, and minority stressors evolved. Results show that parenting increased over time within same-sex legal unions, with women becoming much more likely to parent while parenting remained rare in male-male legal unions. Mothers in same-sex legal unions became more similar over time to mothers in different-sex marriages, whereas fathers in same-sex legal unions were a highly selected group relative to fathers in different-sex marriages, mothers in same- and different-sex legal unions, and people without coresident children in same-sex legal unions. Sex, parenthood, and especially their interaction are important for understanding the characteristics and family formation experiences of people in same-sex legal unions.

Scholars agree that educational gradients in fertility vary by context, with indications of more positive educational gradients in northern and western Europe since the turn of the century. However, despite theoretical and empirical research on rural-urban differences in fertility, our understanding of subnational regional variation and urban-rural differences in the relationship between education and fertility remains limited. Utilising large-scale administrative data from seven countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden) at around the turn of the century, this study identifies substantial subnational regional differences in the association between female education on the one hand, and birth hazards or synthetic parity progression ratios on the other. With respect to urbanisation, we find that higher shares of foreign-born women in more urbanised populations are associated with more negative educational gradients in fertility. Hence, we present a first descriptive step towards the development of a research agenda to explain regional and urban-rural variation in educational gradients in fertility.

In civilizations, individuals are born into or sorted into different levels of socio-economic status (SES). SES clusters in families and geographically, and is robustly associated with genetic effects. Here we first review the history of scientific research on the relationship between SES and heredity. We then discuss recent findings in genomics research in light of the hypothesis that SES is a dynamic social construct that involves genetically influenced traits that help in achieving or retaining a socio-economic position, and can affect the distribution of genes associated with such traits. Social stratification results in people with differing traits being sorted into strata with different environmental exposures, which can result in evolutionary selection pressures through differences in mortality, reproduction and non-random mating. Genomics research is revealing previously concealed genetic consequences of the way society is organized, yielding insights that should be approached with caution in pursuit of a fair and functional society.

We examine the prevalence of gender transitions in Sweden over time and document the sociodemographic characteristics of people transitioning in different periods. Using administrative data covering the transgender population from 1973 through 2020, we analyze two common events in a gender transition: the earliest diagnosis of gender incongruence and the change of legal gender. Our research note presents three main findings. First, the measured prevalence rates of diagnoses and legal gender changes are relatively low in all periods, although they have increased substantially since the early 2010s. Second, the recent increase in transition prevalence is most pronounced among people in early adulthood; in particular, young transgender men drive an increase in overall transition rates through 2018, followed by moderate declines in 2019 and 2020. Third, transgender men and women have substantially lower socioeconomic outcomes than cisgender men and women, regardless of the age at which they transition or the historical period. They are also considerably less likely to be in a legal union or reside with children. These findings highlight the continued economic and social vulnerability of the transgender population.

It is often acknowledged that public policies can constrain people's procreative opportunities, in some cases even infringing their procreative rights. However, a topic that is not often discussed is how the procreative choices of one generation can affect the procreative opportunities of later generations. In this article, we argue that the demographic fact that childbearing above the replacement fertility level is eventually unsustainable supports two constraints on universal procreation rights: a compossibility constraint and an egalitarian constraint. We explore the implications of these two constraints and suggest that there are reasons to think of procreative opportunity as a finite resource that can be distributed more or less equally across generations. We also briefly discuss possible ways of meeting demands of intergenerational justice with respect to procreative opportunity.

An exten sive lit er a ture has exam ined the rela tion ship between birth spac ing and sub se quent health out comes for par ents, par tic u larly for moth ers. However, this research has drawn almost exclu sively on obser va tional research designs, and almost all stud ies have been lim ited to adjusting for observ able fac tors that could con found the rela tion ship between birth spac ing and health out comes. In this study, we use Nor we gian reg is ter data to exam ine the rela tion ship between birth spac ing and the num ber of gen eral prac ti tioner con sul ta tions for moth ers' and fathers' phys i cal and men tal health con cerns imme di ately after child birth (1-5 and 6-11 months after child birth), in the medium term (5-6 years after child bear ing), and in the long term (10-11 years after child bear ing). To exam ine short term health out comes, we esti mate indi vid ual fixed-effects mod els: we hold con stant fac tors that could influ ence par ents' birth spacing behav ior and their health, com par ing health out comes after differ ent births to the same par ent. We apply sib ling fixed effects in our anal y sis of medium- and long-term out comes, hold ing con stant moth ers' and fathers' fam ily back grounds. The results from our ana ly ses that do not apply indi vid ual or sib ling fixed effects are con sis tent with much of the pre vi ous lit er a ture: shorter and lon ger birth inter vals are asso ci ated with worse health out comes than birth inter vals of approx i ma tely 2-3 years. Estimates from indi vid ual fixed-effects mod els sug gest that par tic u larly short inter vals have a mod est neg a tive effect on mater nal men tal health in the short term, with more ambig u ous evi dence that par tic u larly short or long inter vals might mod estly influ ence short-, medium, and longterm phys i cal health out comes. Overall, these results are con sis tent with small to neg li gi ble effects of birth spac ing behav ior on (nonpreg nancyrelated) parental health outcomes.