Volume 13 - Article 22 | Pages 559–572  

Why does Sweden have such high fertility?

By Jan M. Hoem

Abstract

By current European standards, Sweden has had a relatively high fertility in recent decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, the annual Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for Sweden undu­lated consid­erably around a level just under 1.8, which is a bit lower than the corresponding level in France and well above the level in West Germany. (In 2004 the Swedish TFR reached 1.76 on an upward trend.) The Swedish com­pleted Cohort Fertility Rate (CFR) was rather constant at 2 for the cohorts that produced children in the same period; for France it stayed around 2.1 while the West-German CFR was lower and de­clined regularly to around 1.6. In this presentation, I describe the back­ground for these develop­ments and explain the unique Swedish undulations.

Author's Affiliation

• Jan M. Hoem - Stockholms Universitet, Sweden EMAIL

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