Martin Kolk

Kulturnyheterna special: En framtid utan barn Sverige har idag de lägsta födelsetalen sedan 1751 och regeringen har tillsatt en utredning för att svara på varför. Men även runt om i världen sjunker födelsetalen. Handlar det om politik, teknik, in...

Här kan man se en diskussion om barnafödande i SVTs kulturnyheter, där det vrids och vänds på sjunkande barnafödande i olika perspektiv.

www.svtplay.se/video/KZmQoQ...

Attitudes towards childbearing, population, and the environment: prevalence, correlates, and connections with fertility outcomes in Sweden - Population and Environment 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 l...

Read the paper by Kirsti Jylhä, myself, and @mfair.bsky.social‬, for many more details, more models, and more thoughts on the complex relationships between peoples views on population, reproduction, and how they are related.

doi.org/10.1007/s111...

However, the widespread agreement to link childbearing with environmental concerns could influence societal norms, and future policy debates on reproduction and sustainability.

We conclude that while environmental concerns are shaping how people think about population and childbearing, these attitudes haven't yet led to widespread changes in family size and fertility preferences in Sweden.

People with greater climate worry and propensity for climate action are more likely to be worried about the future of a child living in a deteriorating world, than that an additional child may contribute negatively towards such a future. We find weak correlations with political attitudes and trust.

Different eco-reproductive concerns are moderately correlated with each other, and relatively weakly correlated with whether people have children or not. We find that the same people largely support policies reducing population both in their own country, and in developing countries.

People generally agreed both factors are important.While 65-70% of respondents said in principle that environmental problems should factor into childbearing decisions, fewer went as far as saying that individuals should limit the sizes of their families for environmental reasons.

In a second study, with over 600 participants, we asked how much environmental factors should influence childbearing decisions - both the possible impact of a worsening environment on the child, and that an additional child may contribute to an increasing population that may worsen the environment.

We find that younger people and women are more worried about climate change, while men are more concerned about overpopulation. Parents with more children tend to be more concerned about future generations but less worried about overpopulation.

Our first data set is 8,000 respondents in the Swedish Gender and Generation Survey. Respondents were asked about worries such as climate change, overpopulation, and the prospects of future generations. Worries about three things are widespread.

The study focuses on eco-reproductive concerns—the idea that environmental challenges should influence personal and societal views on childbearing.

We do not find that individual decisions about having children are clearly shaped by environmental concerns, but many people believe such concerns should play a role in reproductive choices.

In our new study in Population and Environment, we examine how environmental concerns shape public attitudes toward childbearing in Sweden. We find views linking environmental concerns with reproduction are widespread, even if we find less support that they affect behavior.

doi.org/10.1007/s111...

Much of the increasing gender gap is compositional, with increasing shares of migrants with larger gender gaps, increasing the employment gap in the population.

Among Swedish men and women, employment has decreased, but much less.

Different time series 2005-2024 (with different age categories)

And here is the same figure for age 16-64. Essentially the same pattern, though more dramatic decline in employment (due to more enrolled students at younger ages).

Sweden reached near gender parity in employment in the late 1980s, and if anything, the gender gap has increased since then.

There used to be near-universal employment among Swedish men, with Swedish women nearly catching up in the 1980s.

Swedish labor force survey, age 35-44.

DN Debatt. ”Höj barnbidraget – unga familjer måste prioriteras” DN Debatt. I takt med att barnafödandet minskar bör barnbidraget höjas och göras skattepliktigt, skriver Martin Kolk, docent i demografi.

I dag publicerades min artikel på DN Debatt där jag argumenterar för en höjning, och beskattning av barnbidraget, baserat på att vi ser ökade socioekonomiska skillnader i föräldraskap.

www.dn.se/debatt/hoj-b...

Forskaren: Inget problem med färre barn Det låga barnafödandet i Sverige gäckar regeringen, som nu har tillsatt en utredning. Men utredningens problemformulering ifrågasätts av demografiforskaren Martin Kolk. ”Personligen tycker jag inte at...

Se en ny artikel i Svenska Dagbladet där jag intervjuades om huruvida de senaste 10-årens sjunkande barnafödande är ett socioekonomiskt problem eller inte.

www.svd.se/a/4BpQ96/for...

Take away: Using register data to study religion allows novel research with longitudinal designs.

Register data reveal that wedding linked conversions sustain high endogamy even in secular societies.

Full open access preprint at:

doi.org/10.17045/sth...

However, women are not consistently more endogamous, nor are they always less likely to switch. Patterns depend on the strictness and size of the denomination.

Gender matters, but not uniformly. In endogamous unions created by conversion, wives more often adopt the husband’s faith — especially in Islam and Judaism. For Lutherans, it is husbands who usually join the wife’s religion.

Total effect: by age 45, conversions add ≥ 20 percentage points to endogamy for most minorities, but subtract ~8 points for Lutherans. Marriage is a powerful catalyst for religious mobility.

When do switches happen? For every group except Lutherans, conversions spike in the two year band around the wedding, driving sharp jumps in homogamy. Among Lutherans, secularisation means conversions reduce endogamy over the life course.

Once we control for group size, odds of marrying inside one’s faith explode for stricter or migrant dense groups: 50 to 1 000 fold higher than random matching for Other Protestants, Other Christians, Islam and Judaism, reflecting strong endogamy.

Endogamy at the wedding is high in the majority church (≈ 81 % of Lutherans marry another Lutheran) but far lower for minority groups (≈ 40 % among the unaffiliated, ≈ 15 % among Orthodox).

However, this is largely due to the relative size of the different groups.

We have annual denomination records linked to marital histories. We observe each spouse’s religion at age 17, the wedding year, and every year to age 45. That lets us see when, not just whether, someone switched faith.

Our unique data includes, population level registers, 1.16 million spouses, religious denominations organized in nine faith categories.

Finland maintains a national longitudinal register on religious affiliation.

In a new preprint by Linus Andersson, myself and Jan Saarela, we tracks every marriage in Finland 1972 2020 to show how religious conversions shape endogamy — and how those patterns differ for men and women.

doi.org/10.17045/sth...

MPIDR - Publications The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock is one of the leading demographic research centers in the world. At the MPIDR, researchers from all over the world investigate demo...

I'm happy to share that the 2nd paper of my PhD "Assessing the validity of microsimulated kinship networks using Swedish population registers", with @demography.bsky.social, @martinkolk.bsky.social and @ezagheni.bsky.social, is available as an MPIDR Working Paper share.google/g0nVmiSI6huB...

Recent trends in parenthood in Swedish same- and different-sex legal unions: emerging gender and socioeconomic differences - Genus 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 o...

Parenthood among same-sex couples has changed as policy & social contexts have evolved. Swedish data revealed that same-sex parenting increased over time among women, but remained rare among men.

👉 New paper by Mollborn, @martinkolk.bsky.social & Evertsson

🔗 genus.springeropen.com/articles/10....