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The demographics of same-sex marriages in Norway and Sweden

Demography

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Abstract

The present study investigates the demographics of same-sex marriages—that is, registered partnerships—in Norway and Sweden. We give an overview of the demographic characteristics of the spouses of these partnerships, study patterns of their divorce risks, and compare the dynamics of same-sex couples with those of heterosexual marriages. We use longitudinal information from the population registers of the two countries that cover all persons in partnerships. Our demographic analyses include information on characteristics such as age, sex, geographic background, experience of previous opposite-sex marriage, parenthood, and educational attainment of the partners involved. The results show that in many respects, the distributions of married populations on these characteristics differ by the sex composition of the couples. Patterns in divorce risks are rather similar in same-sex and opposite-sex marriages, but divorce-risk levels are considerably higher in same-sex marriages. The divorce risk for female partnerships is double that for male partnerships.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Konrad-Zuse-Str. 1, 18057, Rostock, Germany

    Gunnar Andersson

  2. Statistics Norway, Oslo, Norway

    Turid Noack & Ane Seierstad

  3. Section of Medical Statistics, University of Oslo, Norway

    Harald Weedon-Fekjær

Authors
  1. Gunnar Andersson
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  2. Turid Noack
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  3. Ane Seierstad
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  4. Harald Weedon-Fekjær
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Additional information

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Boston. The study is a joint work of the four coauthors. Our project was initiated by Turid Noack. Gunnar Andersson has contributed to the article with the analyses of the Swedish data, while the Norwegian analyses were performed by Turid Noack, Ane Seierstad, and Harald Weedon-Fekjær. We are grateful to Karin Wahlbin of Statistics Sweden for having prepared the individual-partnership data on Sweden. In addition, we extend our gratitude to Lee Badgett, Patrick Festy, Gayle Kaufman, Gerda Neyer, and Jens Rydström for their valuable comments. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff of Demography for their very helpful comments.

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Andersson, G., Noack, T., Seierstad, A. et al. The demographics of same-sex marriages in Norway and Sweden. Demography 43, 79–98 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2006.0001

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