Abstract
In Sweden, as in other industrialized countries, a decades-old decline in fertility rates has been accompanied by a rise in the age at first birth. In contrast to other industrialized countries, however, fertility rates rose sharply in the 1980s before plummeting in the 1990s. In this paper we apply hazard regression to data from the 1992 Swedish Family Survey, supplemented by annual earnings data linked to individuals and by annual time series of national-level economic indicators, to investigate the predictors of the timing of the first birth of women in Sweden since the mid-1960s. The discovery that both individual characteristics and aggregate-level factors influence the timing of the first birth casts light on both the continuing trend of postponement of the first birth and annual fluctuations in first-birth rates.
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Santow, G., Bracher Deferment of the First Birth and Fluctuating Fertility in Sweden. European Journal of Population 17, 343–363 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012527623350
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012527623350