The World Health Organization recognizes the highest possible standard of health as a fundamental human right. Health disparities should therefore be studied and addressed to ensure that everyone, at all levels of society, has the same opportunities to enjoy good health and a long life. Individuals with higher levels of education tend to have better health, and the benefits of education may also spill over to the health of close others, such as spouses or partners. So, is having a highly educated partner associated with lower mortality? Has this association changed across generations? And does the distinction between marriage and cohabitation matter? 

The answers to these questions are particularly timely given the major societal changes over the past century, which underscore the importance of considering the educational resources of both partners in a couple. Women’s educational attainment and workforce participation have increased, while traditional marriage has ceded ground to more informal living arrangements, such as cohabitation. As a result, more couples now share similar educational backgrounds, and a growing number are choosing to live together without marrying (Schwartz 2013).

The Finnish case

In a recent study (Potente, Palumbo and Jalovaara 2025) we assessed how patterns of individual and partner educational attainment relate to mortality among men and women in Finland, and whether these relationships differ between married and cohabiting couples over time. Our analysis is based on Finland’s comprehensive population data, covering individuals born since 1932. We focused on heterosexual couples aged 50 and above, born between 1932 and 1970, and compared outcomes across various combinations of partners’ educational attainment. Finland stands out for its high rates of women’s education and full-time employment, as well as its pioneering embrace of non-marital cohabitation, although this form of partnership remains less associated with affluence and stability than marriage.

Why living with a partner can boost survival

Individuals in coresidential partnerships, whether married or not, tend to have longer survival rates than single individuals, whether previously partnered or never partnered. A key theoretical framework for understanding this phenomenon is the life-course theory, especially the “linked lives” principle, which highlights the interdependence of individual life paths (Carr 2018). People’s lives are shaped through their social ties, especially close family relationships such as partners, children, and siblings. 

In a coresidential partnership, partners exchange support and share resources and stresses, meaning that one partner’s socioeconomic resources, such as education, can also shape the other partner’s survival chances. This makes mortality risk partly relational rather than just individual. However, both coresidential partnership and individual experience may change such expected relationships, given the different levels of commitment and financial participation of each partner (Lindmarker, 2025). Marriage is likely to be more strongly associated with male-breadwinner equilibria than cohabitation, although these differences would have been more pronounced among earlier birth cohorts.  

The educational composition of couples and men’s and women’s mortality 

Our findings reveal that higher levels of education, both of ego and of his/her partner, are linked to lower mortality. Couples where both partners are in the high (tertiary) education group enjoy the greatest longevity, while those comprising two low-educated partners (both having only elementary schooling) fare the worst. Mixed-education couples fall somewhere in between.

Gender plays an important role. Men do best in terms of survival when both partners are highly educated and worst when both are low educated, with mixed-education couples in between. For women, the picture is more complex and varies by birth cohort. Among those born before 1950, longevity is similar for both low- and highly educated women, provided their male partners are highly educated. Surprisingly, we find a similar pattern for married and cohabiting women in the oldest cohort: in both union types, women partnered with a highly educated man have survival levels close to those of women in couples where both partners are highly educated, even when the woman’s own education is low. For women born after 1950, survival differences vary according to the couple’s educational makeup, increasingly resembling the pattern observed among men.

Couple mortality disparities have increased over time

Our study highlights how the gap in survival between high- and low-educated couples has grown wider across generations. 
Longevity has increased particularly among married couples where both partners are highly educated (Figure 1). By contrast, those with low levels of education have missed out on these gains and, in many cases, have fallen further behind, among cohabiting couples especially (Figure 2). As a result, the health divide linked to education is increasingly apparent, not only among individuals but also between different types of couples, with the least educated emerging as the most vulnerable group. These trends could reflect changes in how education, including the resources and opportunities it brings, is distributed within relationships, as well as changes in who chooses to marry or cohabit.

Takeaway message

Our research highlights that the biggest risks show up in particular types of couples, especially low-educated married and cohabiting couples. The results suggest that prevention and support need to better reach low-educated couples, who seem less likely to benefit from the improvements over time seen among highly educated married couples. These are important findings to consider in order to prevent a further widening of longevity gaps at the couple level , and a worsening of health inequalities.

References

Carr, D. (2018). The Linked Lives Principle in Life Course Studies: Classic Approaches and Contemporary Advances. In D. F. Alwin, D. H. Felmlee, & D. A. Kreager (Eds.), Social Networks and the Life Course (pp. 41–63). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71544-5_3

Lindmarker, J., Kolk, M., & Drefahl, S. (2025). Cohabitation and mortality across the life course: A longitudinal cohort study with Swedish register-based sibling comparisons. European Journal of Population, 41(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-024-09722-6

Potente, C., Palumbo, L., & Jalovaara, M. (2025). Partner’s Education and Mortality in Finland: A Study of Married and Cohabiting Unions Among Cohorts Born Between 1932 and 1970. European Journal of Population, 41(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-025-09752-8

Schwartz, C. R. (2013). Trends and variation in assortative mating: causes and consequences. Annual Review of Sociology, 39(1), 451–470. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145544

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We recently examined the connection between religion and fertility in Finland (Kolk and Saarela, 2024). Our study differs from most previous literature in that we use national register data on religious denominations. Finland, in contrast to nearly all other countries in the world, includes religion in its longitudinal registers.

The influence of religion on fertility

The link between religion and fertility is a classical topic in demographic research, as discussed for instance by Notestein (1945) when he introduced his theory of the demographic transition. It was also an important explanatory factor in the quest to explain the European fertility decline in the 19^th century (e.g. Lesthaeghe 1983).

We investigated several dimensions of the phenomenon that had previously being overlooked, or considered only superficially, in the demography of religion, such as differences across converts, and the influence of religious homo/heterogamy. In contrast to much previous research, we did not focus on religiosity (practices and beliefs) but considered only differences by denomination. This, we admit, is a potential limitation of our research: it is one thing to belong formally to a given religious group, but another to actually share that specific worldview, follow certain precepts, etc.

The Finnish religious landscape

The Finnish religious landscape is dominated by a large Lutheran state church, a growing number of unaffiliated churches, and a smaller official orthodox state church (related to former Russian rule). Other denominations are rather small. The quite distinct Laestadian community is (for now) integrated into the state church. However, our religious data are very detailed, and we can show our results for all the main religious groups. Our study is based on all women and men born between 1956 to 1975 who were resident in Finland from age 15 up to at least age 45. Most of the recent immigrants to Finland are therefore, and regretfully, excluded from the analysis.

Religion does not matter much, after all – not in Finland, at least

Overall, our most important finding is that differences in fertility across denominations in Finland are quite small (Figure 1). We find the lowest childbearing among the unaffiliated, and, interestingly, typically find higher fertility among members of the State Church than other denominations.

The largest differences relate to childlessness (Figure 2), where we find particularly elevated levels of childlessness among non-affiliated women. We also find higher childlessness among “other Christians” (mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses) and Eastern religions. 

Some religious groups are rather small and should be understood in their distinct and unique national context. For example, Finnish Muslims in our study largely consist of Muslim tartars who arrived in Finland during Russian rule in the 19^th century. In other words, the Finnish socioreligious context is peculiar (like most others, in fact, but each in its own way), which should caution against hasty extrapolations of our results to other countries. 

Several other dimensions of fertility and religion could be considered, such as differences between endogamous and exogamous unions across denominations, or between converts and non-converts, and this is done in our scientific paper (Kolk and Saarela 2024). Results cannot be reported here, for reasons of space, but interested readers are welcome to read our (open access) publication.

References

Kolk, M & Saarela, J. (2024) Religion and Fertility: A Longitudinal Register Study Examining Differences by Sex, Parity, Partner’s Religion, and Religious Conversion in Finland. European Journal of Population, 40(3), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-023-09693-0 (open access)

Lesthaeghe, R. (1983). A century of demographic and cultural change in Western Europe: An exploration of underlying dimensions. Population and Development Review, 9(3), 411–435.

Notestein, F. W. (1945). Population—The long view. In T. W. Schultz (Ed.), Food for the world. University of Chicago Press.

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Introduction

Against the backdrop of the postponement of childbearing behaviours and the increased availability of Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) treatments over the last decades, the proportion of families formed via MAR has been rising rapidly and the positive trend is expected to continue (Faddy, Gosden, and Gosden 2018). MAR is playing an increasingly important role in the realization of fertility intentions in advanced societies and to date an estimated 10 million children have been born after MAR. Yet, our understanding of MAR-conceived children’s well-being beyond the childhood period is still limited. 

In a recently published article in the European Journal of Population (Remes et al. 2022), using Population register data on all children born in Finland 1995-2000, we compared a range of social and mental health outcomes among MAR and naturally conceived adolescents between families in the overall population and, for a subset of families who conceived both via MAR and naturally, within families. The latter approach enabled us to adjust for family characteristics which are shared by siblings but unobserved in the data.   

In the analysed data, 4.9% (n = 13,757) of adolescents had been conceived through MAR techniques. On average, in line with existing work (Goisis et. al 2020), MAR-conceived adolescents had more advantaged backgrounds: their parents had higher levels of education and income, were more likely to be married and less likely to smoke during pregnancy than parents of children conceived naturally. 

Social outcomes results 

In the analyses that did not adjust for family characteristics, MAR-conceived adolescents had higher school grades and their likelihood of school dropout, not being in education or employment (NEET), and early home-leaving were lower than among naturally conceived adolescents.  However, this advantage over naturally conceived children was largely explained when we adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics (Figure 1). This pattern was further supported by the analyses where we compared MAR-conceived adolescents to their naturally conceived siblings, which showed no differences in the social outcomes. These results suggest that MAR-conceived children had better social outcomes because they benefitted from their parents advantaged characteristics.

Mental health outcomes results 

In the analyses that did not adjust for family characteristics, the results largely showed no differences between MAR and naturally conceived adolescents. However, when adjusted for child and parental characteristics, MAR-conceived adolescents were found to be more likely to have received care for any mental disorder and for internalizing disorders, in particular (Figure 2). This pattern of associations was also observed in the within-family analyses. Therefore, MAR-conceived adolescents advantaged social background compensates for the otherwise increased risk of poorer mental health outcomes. This increased risk might be related to parental anxiety and depression associated with the experience of subfertility, which could expose the children to a higher risk of mental health problems. Another possible pathway could be higher expectations and overprotectiveness amongst MAR parents that adversely affect their children’s socio-emotional outcomes. More research is needed to understand the possible mechanisms underlying the observed association.  

Conclusions

The results paint a generally reassuring picture for adolescents born after MAR who, on average and before taking into account family characteristics, show better social outcomes and similar mental health outcomes to children conceived naturally. Moreover, they show the importance of integrating family characteristics whilst investigating MAR children’s outcomes. Indeed, the positively selected and advantaged characteristics of MAR parents help explain why MAR-conceived children outperform naturally conceived children on social outcomes, and are likely to compensate for their otherwise increased risk of mental health disorders. Finally, the comprehensive perspective on MAR children offered by this study highlights a potential trade-off and variation in the link between MAR and adolescent outcomes across different dimensions of well-being. Although relatively small, the observed mental health differences raise concerns and deserve further investigation. 

References

Faddy Malcolm J., Gosden Matthew D., Gosden Roger G. 2018. “A Demographic Projection of the Contribution of Assisted Reproductive Technologies to World Population Growth.” Reproductive Biomedicine Online 36(4):455–58.

Goisis, A., Håberg, S., Hanevik, H., Magnus, M.C., Kravdal Ø. (2020). The demographics of assisted reproductive technology births in a Nordic country Human Reproduction 35(6): 1441–1450.

Remes, H., Palma, M., Peltonen, R., Martikainen, P. and Goisis, A. (2022) The well-being of adolescents conceived through medically assisted reproduction: a population-level and within-family analysis. European Journal of Population 38: 915–949. 

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As marriage declines and divorce increases, partnership trends and household composition become increasingly determined by trends in the formation and dissolution of non-marital cohabiting unions. Marika Jalovaara and Linus Andersson show that in Finland, the decline in marriage is not offset by an equivalent increase in cohabitation, and educational disparities in the prevalence of unions have increased somewhat from already-high levels in 1990. These patterns are remarkably similar for men and women.

The decline in marriage and the increase in divorce have continued well beyond the turn of the millennium in the Nordic countries and elsewhere. But does that mean that fewer people live with a partner? And are trends similar across gender and educational levels? To evaluate the trends in partnerships and the educational gradients therein, in a recent paper we analysed both marital and non-marital forms of (coresidential) partnership formation and dissolution from 1990 to 2019 in Finland (Jalovaara and Andersson 2023).

Trends in cohabitation and marriage

One of the major changes in family behaviour of the 20th century was that fewer people married and among those who did, more divorced. Family demographers have long pointed out that trends in marriage and divorce rates are consequential for both childbearing and well-being. Yet, non-marital partnerships have to some extent replaced marital ones, maintaining a balance in the share of the population living with a partner. However, this “compensating” effect may be only partial, in part because of sheer numbers, and in part because, while all forms of partnership are critical for individuals’ childbearing and household economy, marriage remains a stronger predictor of fertility and (relational and financial) stability than simple cohabitation.

The picture is further complicated by disparate evidence suggesting that trends in marital and non-marital partnerships differ for men and women, even when they have comparable educational levels. Finally, quality data on non-marital partnership formation and dissolution over time are generally scant. 

This is not the case in Finland, however, where we could access population register data that include the dates of marriage and divorce as well as the dates of non-marital cohabitation and dissolution for the entire population from 1990 to 2019. We focused on the age groups from 18 to 45 years because these are the ages when partnership formation is most common (and relevant for childbearing). We found that marriage prevalence (the share of the population who are married) declined in Finland across all educational groups among both men and women (Figure 1). In total, the share of married persons declined from 48% to 28% for all men from 53% to 33% for all women, with levels that are lower, the younger the age group.

We then considered partnership prevalence as a status of being either married or in a non-marital cohabiting union (Figure 2). If non-marital partnerships have indeed replaced marital partnerships, we would expect stability in total partnership prevalence from 1990 to 2019. Instead, we found a decline in total union prevalence. This is particularly the case among the group without upper secondary education, among whom the prevalence has fallen by more than 20 percentage points for men and almost 30 percentage points for women. Among individuals with medium levels of education, total union prevalence has decreased by three to eight percentage points over the past three decades. In contrast, we found a slight increase in total partnership prevalence among men and women with high education, although not for all age groups. 

Further analyses of the formation and dissolution of non-marital unions led us to conclude that non-marital unions were not sufficiently numerous and durable to fully compensate for the decline in marriage. Rates of separation (the share of partnered individuals who separate) have increased steadily over time across all types of union, while total partnering rates (the share of those who marry or enter a cohabiting union among the population not married or cohabiting) have been declining since around 2010 (Table 1).

Implications 

The decline in marriage and the increase in divorce are key features in the changing picture of the demography of the family. Yet, this is only half of the story: non-marital cohabitation has replaced marital unions but only to a limited extent. Forming a partnership and having children are fundamentally related. A higher share of non-marital cohabiting unions – more prone to partnership break-up than marriages – in combination with a lower total partnering rate during childbearing ages, can have negative consequences for childbearing. 

A reversed, or different, causal chain is also possible. The partnership trends we observe in Finland may be driven by a decreased desire for childbearing, or there may be common underlying forces that depress childbearing and partnerships. Be as it may, a trend away from partnerships is, in itself, likely to depress fertility.

Moreover, trends toward fewer and less stable couple households have implications for welfare policies. The household is a core economic unit and often protects against financial risks (e.g. unemployment). In countries where redistributive policy is adapted to dual-earner households in particular, trends towards fewer partnerships should be taken into consideration.

Finally, these trends are largely uniform across gender, even at comparable levels of education. While substantial differences exist, these are matters of degree rather than kind. Other studies (Kolk 2022, Andersson 2022) also show that educational and socioeconomic differences in family dynamics are similar in gender-egalitarian Nordic countries such as Finland, where women and men now have quite similar social and economic roles.

References

Andersson, Linus. ‘The Contribution of Partnership Contexts of Births to Cohort Fertility Rates’. SocArXiv, 3 January 2023. .

Jalovaara Marika, Andersson Linus (2023). A register-based account of period trends in union prevalence, entries, and exits by educational level for men and women in Finland. Demographic Research, 48 [14], 373–386. 10.4054/DemRes.2023.48.14

Kolk, M. (2022). The relationship between life-course accumulated income and childbearing of Swedish men and women born 1940–70. Population Studies, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2022.2134578

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Health conditions tend to deteriorate across immigrant generations, so that first-generation immigrants frequently have better health than second and higher order generations: a process known as “negative health assimilation” (Rumbaut 1994, Hamilton et al. 2011, Mossakowski 2015). Little is known, however, about the health of children in exogamous families, where one parent is native and the other immigrant. 

Data, variables, and method

In a recent paper, we provide evidence on the role of mixed families in shaping the health gaps between different generations of immigrants in Finland (Loi et al. 2021).

The study population includes children aged 0–14 at the end of 2000, covering the 1986–2000 birth cohorts. The data derive from the Finnish population register, the Finnish hospital discharge register, and the Finnish medication purchases register. The outcomes of interest are health care records on somatic conditions, mental disorders and injuries.

• Somatic conditions include all types of conditions, such as, for instance, cancer, severe infections, asthma, epilepsy, and type 1 diabetes.

• Mental disorders include any psychopathology, such as mental and behavioral disorders due to psychoactive substance use, mood/affective disorders, neurotic syndromes, behavioral and emotional disorders.

• Injuries include all types of injuries, such as burns, poisoning, and toxic effects of substances.

The study group includes the following categories of children:

• native (the reference category): born in Finland or abroad to native parents;

• first-generation immigrant: born abroad to parents who were also born abroad;

• second-generation: born in Finland to parents who were born abroad and later migrated to Finland; and

• 2.5-generation: born to one native and one immigrant parent.

We further divide children of the 2.5 generation into those who have an immigrant mother and those who have an immigrant father. 

We pool all the person-years and apply logistic regressions with standard errors clustered by individual. We estimate three models for each of the outcomes. These are:

• model 1, where we study the relationship between immigrant generation and health,

• model 2, where we include family socioeconomic resources, and

• model 3, where we include stressors experienced in early childhood.

The generational health gradient

Adolescents with one immigrant and one native parent have a higher level of health care needs than adolescents whose parents are either both immigrants or both native. This holds especially for mental health problems.

Figure 1 shows the health gaps across immigrant generations on any cause of health care need, compared to natives. In Model 1 we observe a general pattern of increasing risk of receiving care over the immigrant generations. Compared with natives, first-generation immigrants have a lower risk. This result reflects a selection mechanism: adolescents who were born abroad and immigrated with their parents benefit from a positive health selection, which is typical of first-generation immigrants (Abraído-Lanza et al. 1999; Kennedy et al. 2006). For the second generation, the risk of receiving care is similar to that of natives, while 2.5-generation children face a higher risk, especially if the foreign-born parent is the father.

In Model 2, we refine the analysis and test whether family demographic and socioeconomic characteristics contribute to explaining the health differences across immigrant generations. We include mother’s age at childbirth and education, whether information on the father is missing, and household income. Although associated with the outcome, these characteristics do not help to significantly reduce the health gaps across generations. In Model 3, we test whether stressors that occurred earlier in childhood can help explain the pattern. These stressors include whether the adolescent’s parents divorced before the his or her 10th birthday, whether the child lives in a two-parent family, and whether the mother has mental health problems. Living in a two-parent family is associated with a lower risk of receiving care, whereas parental divorce before the child’s 10th birthday is associated with poorer health. Having a mother with a mental health condition is associated with a higher risk of poor health in adolescence. Once again, all these mechanisms help explain part of the difference across immigrant generations, but not all of it. 

Differences by cause of health care needs

Figure 2 shows the association between immigrant generation and health care needs by cause: mental disorders, somatic conditions, and injuries. Health differences compared with natives across generations of adolescents are particularly strong in the case of mental health: children of the first and second generation have a lower risk of receiving treatment for mental disorders, suggesting a persistence of the health advantage.  

Children with one native and one immigrant parent face a higher risk of mental disorders, and this relationship is stronger when the immigrant parent is the father.

Conclusions

Adolescents with one immigrant and one native parent constitute a specific health risk group. As other “explanatory” variables fail to reduce the gap with respect to the reference group, this may be a consequence either of other unobserved familial characteristics (e.g. tensions between partners) or of the broader social context in the receiving country. Adolescents with a native-born and an immigrant parent may face obstacles to integration that cause them to develop mental disorders more easily than others. These adolescents are becoming more and more numerous in immigration societies, and their health is likely to influence their later outcomes (in school, in the labor market and in social life); they probably need higher levels of care and support than they have received until now. 

Funding

This research was financially supported by the Max Planck Society within the framework of the research initiative “The Challenges of Migration, Integration and Exclusion” (WiMi).

References 

Abraído-Lanza, A. F., Dohrenwend, B. P., Ng-Mak, S. S., & Turner, J. B. (1999). The Latino mortality paradox: A test of the “salmon bias” and healthy migrant hypotheses. American Journal of Public Health, 89, 1543–1548.

Hamilton, E. R., Cardoso, J. B., Hummer, R. A., & Padilla, Y. C. (2011). Assimilation and emerging health disparities among new generations of U.S. children. Demographic Research, 25, 783–818. 

Kennedy, S., McDonald, J. T., & Biddle, N. (2006). The healthy immigrant effect and immigrant selection: Evidence from four countries (SEDAP Research Paper No. 164). Hamilton, Ontario, Canada: Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Program, McMaster University.

Loi S., Pitkänen J., Moustgaard H., Myrskylä M., Martikainen P.; Health of Immigrant Children: The Role of Immigrant Generation, Exogamous Family Setting, and Family Material and Social Resources. Demography 2021; 9411326.

Mossakowski, K. N. (2015). Disadvantaged family background and depression among young adults in the United States: The roles of chronic stress and self-esteem. Stress and Health, 31, 52–62.

Rumbaut, R. G. (1994). The crucible within: Ethnic identity, self-esteem, and segmented among children of immigrants. International Migration Review, 28, 748–794.

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The past

Results from the 2020 population censuses in the United States and China recently made headlines. But rather than recognizing the social, economic, environmental and climatic benefits of slower rates of population growth for the U.S., China and the planet, much of the print and broadcast media in the U.S. stressed the downsides of slower growth and chose to write about population collapse, baby bust and demographic decline.

The U.S. population increase of 7.4 percent from 2010 to 2020 was the second lowest rate of growth since the country’s first census in 1790, and half the typical growth rates since 1790. Only during the Great Depression of the 1930s did U.S. population grow more slowly, by 7.3 percent. Even slower rates of growth are expected in the coming decades (Figure 1).

China’s population grew 5.3 percent in the decade ending in 2020, the lowest decadal growth rate since the catastrophic famine of the late 1950s. India projects for 2011-2021 its lowest decadal rate of population growth, 12.5 percent, since its independence.

The present

Lopsided lamentations have focused on the downsides of slower population growth. For example, some commentators who favor more rapid U.S. population growth contend that Americans would like to have more children than they are presently having. However, while this is the case for some American couples, others want fewer children. In 2011 (the latest available year), of the 6.1 million pregnancies in the United States, 1.6 million (27 percent) were mistimed and 1.1 million (18 percent) were unwanted at any time. Of all U.S. pregnancies in 2011, 45 percent were not intended (Guttmacher Institute 2019).

Some public handwringers maintain that a large population size aids the United States’ competition for economic and geopolitical dominance with China. But the mercantilist view that there is strength in numbers alone is obsolete by centuries. A large or rapidly growing population is hardly necessary or sufficient for prosperity.

Finland, ranked the happiest country in the world, has a total fertility rate of 1.4, compared to 1.6 in the U.S., 0.8 in South Korea, 1.1 in Singapore, 1.3 in Italy, 1.4 in Japan, 1.5 in Norway and 1.7 in Denmark. Women in China currently have 1.3 children on average, markedly fewer than in the United States (Figure 2).

The future

Some advocates of more rapid population growth argue that it would permit more people who want to migrate to the U.S. to do so. About 158 million adults in other countries would like to move and settle permanently in the U.S., according to the Gallup poll in 2018 (Esipova, Pugliese and Ray 2018). Would the U.S. willingly accept many or most of these would-be migrants?

More rapid population growth, especially through increased immigration of working-age adults, would temporarily ease the pressures on pay-as-you-go public programs for the elderly, particularly Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., by broadening the country’s tax base. But there’s a catch: in the future, those additional workers would retire, requiring additional workers to broaden the tax base again for the retiring workers. This demographic expansion would need to continue indefinitely.

Public discussion in the U.S. has largely ignored the notable social, economic and environmental upsides of slower American population growth. Slower population growth increases economic opportunities for women and minority groups, and exerts upward pressures on wages, especially for unskilled labor. For a given rate of capital investment, slower population growth also raises capital per person, raising productivity. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows more slowly, but GDP per person grows faster.

All else equal, slower population growth lessens America’s contributions to climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and pollution from commercial, industrial, agricultural, and domestic activities, such as heating and cooling buildings and fueling transport. Slower population growth makes it easier for governments, schools, and civic and religious organizations to respond more fully to increasing demands.

Worries about impending demographic doom for the U.S. seem decidedly misplaced. The United Nations (2019) projects that the populations of 55 countries or areas will decrease by 1 percent or more between 2020 and 2050. China’s population is projected to fall by almost 3 percent, Italy’s by 10 percent and Japan’s by 16 percent (Figure 3). By contrast, the population of the United States, currently at 333 million, is projected to grow by nearly 14 percent, largely through immigration, to 379 million by 2050.

The world’s population growth rate peaked in the 1960s and is falling in most regions except sub-Saharan Africa, which is the last major region to go through the demographic transition from high rates of mortality and fertility to relatively low rates. Whereas the U.S. population increased nearly four-fold during the 20^th century, it is expected to increase by roughly 50 percent in the 21^st century.

Conclusions

The United States and many other countries, including China, face real population challenges, but not principally slower population growth or even gradual population decline. These include addressing the needs of a rapidly aging population, managing cities and economies in recognition of climate change and environmental degradation, regulating and responding to migration, enabling people to have the children they want through reproductive health care and child-care support, and maintaining competitive technological change with better investments in education and worker training.

As COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated worldwide, real population challenges include protecting people against future pandemics and raising the value placed on today’s children, who are tomorrow’s problem solvers. In 2021, 22 percent of all children under age 5 years were stunted from chronic undernutrition (UNICEF, WHO, World Bank Group 2021), despite record cereal production globally (FAO 2021).

The global slowdown in population growth rates is not a transitory demographic problem: it signals important durable successes. It has encouraging implications for climate change and the environment. Couples are having fewer children in an increasingly urbanized world while men and women pursue education, employment and careers and live longer than ever before.

It is time to recognize that slower population growth benefits America, China, and the Earth.

References

Agarwal, Kabir (2020) “India’s Population Will Be 1.52 Billion by 2036, With 70% of Increase in Urban Areas”.  13 August The Wire

Esipova, Neli, Anita Pugliese and Julie Ray (2018) “More Than 750 Million Worldwide Would Migrate if They Could”.  10 December Gallup Poll

FAO (2021) World Food Situation.

Finer, Lawrence B. and Zolna, Mia R. (2016) “Declines in unintended pregnancy in the United States, 2008–2011”.  New England Journal of Medicine 374:843-852.  DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1506575.

Guttmacher Institute (2019) “Unintended Pregnancy in the United States”.  January

Shetty, Sudhanva (2021) “China’s 2020 Census Shows Population Barely Growing, Staring at Decline”. 11 May TRANSFIN

U.S. Census Bureau (2021) “First 2020 Census Data Release”. 26 April

U.S. Census Bureau (2020) “A Changing Nation: Population Projections”.

U.S. Census Bureau (1975) “Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970”. Government Printing Office.

UN (2019) “World Population Prospects: 2019.” United Nations, Population Division. New York, NY.

UNICEF, WHO, World Bank Group (2021) Levels and trends in child malnutrition. Key findings.

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The expansion of non-marital childbearing

Why is it important to study whether children are born to married or unmarried parents? First, because being born to unmarried parents increases a child’s likelihood of living in a single-parent family (Andersson et al. 2002, 2017). Some children are born to single mothers. However, most children born outside marriage are born to cohabiting parents who did not marry before the child was born (Kiernan 2001). Parental separation is much more common and tends to occur sooner when parents are not married. Many single-parent families are doing fine, but at population level, the risk of poverty, for instance, is much higher in single-parent families than in two-parent families (Eurostat 2016). Second, because non-marital childbearing has become extremely common in most European countries, mainly because parents increasingly live together without being married (Kiernan 2001). Ideational and structural changes have contributed to the tremendous increase in childbirth outside marriage.

The Nordic countries were forerunners in this development (Figure 1). In the 1970s and 1980s, they were European outliers in this respect.

In Finland, the proportion of non-marital births has been smaller than in the other Nordic countries. One reason is that views on marriage are more conservative. While in the 1960s the vast majority (~95%) of children in Finland were still born within marriage (Figure 1), today, about 45% of all births are to unmarried parents. The percentages are even higher for first children, because some parents marry after the first birth. Since the mid-1990s, the majority of first children have been born to unmarried mothers (compared with a tiny minority in the 1970s).

A matter of education

In Finland, as elsewhere (Perelli-Harris et al. 2010), non-marital childbearing has increased substantially for parents of all educational categories, but, as Figure 2 shows, the increase has been inversely proportional to the parents’ educational level.

However, to better interpret Figure 2, structural changes must be taken into account. The average level of education has increased in recent decades and in many countries, the largest segment of the population currently has a “medium” level of education. Since the 1980s, this is also the case for first-time mothers and fathers in Finland (Figure 3). However, the situation is still evolving, and more and more parents, especially mothers, now have a tertiary degree. Among mothers of children born in the new millennium, almost half had completed either lower or higher tertiary level education.

A break-down exercise

In a recent study, we evaluated how parents with different levels of education contributed to the overall increase in non-marital first childbearing (Schnor and Jalovaara 2019). We considered changes in the parents’ educational profiles and changes in marriage behaviour.

Figure 4 shows how the educational segments contributed to the percentage-point increase in non-marital first childbearing across the decades. The increase is mainly attributable to increases in non-marital childbearing rates in the medium-educated population. While the prevalence of non-marital first-time childbearing was still highest among the low-educated, their overall contribution was small or even negative due to diminishing group size. The contribution of the upper tertiary-educated to non-marital childbearing remained relatively low.

Among mothers, the lower tertiary-educated also made a significant contribution. If lower- and upper tertiary-educated women are taken together, they account for approximately half of the increase in non-marital first childbirths in recent decades.

How educational expansion ties in with the rise in non-marital childbearing

During educational expansion, the ideational climate changed, making childbearing outside marriage socially acceptable. The largest increase in non-marital first childbearing occurred from the 1980s to the 1990s. At the same time, many countries underwent an economic recession. In response to the uncertainty and loss of opportunity, the medium and lower tertiary-educated may have preferred unmarried cohabitation or decided to postpone marriage. The medium-educated group is quantitatively large and may affect population trends, but research has not paid much attention to them, because of the focus on comparing the highest and lowest educated.

Of course, it remains important to investigate the living situations of low educated parents because they cumulate different disadvantages. At the same time, however, we need to consider the context in which the majority of children live. Non-marital childbearing has become common among the medium-educated and increasingly also among the high-educated. We should be sensitive to the implications that this change may bring for family instability and its consequences in terms of social and economic inequalities.

Acknowledgements

The research was funded by the Academy of Finland (decisions 275030, 321264, and 320162).

References

Andersson G (2002) Children’s experience of family disruption and family formation: Evidence from 16 FFS countries. Demographic Research 7(7): 343–364.

Andersson G, Thomson E and Duntava A (2017). Life-table representations of family dynamics in the 21st century. Demographic Research 37: 1081–1230.

Eurostat (2016a) Europe 2020 indicators – poverty and social exclusion. Available:  (Accessed: 11 December 2019)

Kiernan K (2001) European perspectives on nonmarital childbearing. In: L.Wu & B. Wolfe (eds.), Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Non-marital Fertility. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 77–108.

Perelli-Harris B, Lappegård T, Keizer R and Berghammer C (2010) The educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation in Europe. Population and Development Review 36(4): 775–801. Schnor Christine & Jalovaara Marika (2019): The spread of non-marital childbearing and its link to educational expansion. Acta Sociologica. 

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To overcome this limitation, I used administrative data, where data on abortion experiences come from women’s medical records rather than self-reports and thus are not underreported. A shortcoming of administrative data is that it does not provide information on some relevant individual traits, such as attitudes or religious beliefs. However, with the help of appropriate statistical models, the influence of unobserved characteristics on the decision-making processes around abortions and union dissolutions can be quantified and analysed.

The context

In Finland, it has been relatively easy to obtain an abortion since legislation was liberalised in the 1970s. All municipalities have been legally required to provide family planning services since 1972. Many policies that reduce the cost of childbearing have been implemented over time: education is free of charge at all levels, day-care of children is subsidised by the government to enable both parents to work, and parental leave is subsidised at around 70% of the income level prior to childbearing.

Unstable union experiences associated with more abortions

In my analysis, I followed 17,666 women born in 1965-69 from the year they turned 15 until year 2010, when they were in their early 40s. The data included information about the women’s level of education, relationship status, births and abortions in each year. Twenty-three percent of women in the sample had at least one abortion in the course of this study.

Women who experienced a higher number of marriages or cohabiting unions also obtained a higher number of abortions. This could also be due to individual characteristics, which could not be observed in this study, such as religiousness, attitudes, and personality. Religiousness is often associated with negative attitudes towards abortion (Ellison, Echevarría, and Smith 2005; Hess and Rueb 2005) and lower approval of divorce. Thus, religiousness may be associated with a lower likelihood of separating from a partner as well as obtaining an abortion. Personality traits, such as high extraversion, low emotional stability, and low conscientiousness, have been associated with a higher likelihood of experiencing an unintended pregnancy (Berg et al. 2013) – perhaps these traits also correlate with union stability.

When it comes to characteristics that were observed in these data, interestingly, divorce was associated with a higher likelihood of obtaining an abortion during the same calendar year than separation from a cohabiting partner (Figure 1). Women may be less likely to want children due to the added cost of breaking up if children are involved (Lillard and Waite 1993): they are therefore more likely to terminate a pregnancy than those in a stable relationship.

Previous pregnancies also mattered for abortion decisions: women whose youngest child was 18 months old or younger had a higher likelihood of abortion than women with no children or older children (Figure 1). Those with a previous experience of abortion had a slightly higher likelihood of terminating a pregnancy than those without previous abortion(s), but the effect was relatively small (Figure 1).

Does it matter if you are married or cohabiting?

The likelihood of abortion was higher for women who were cohabiting with a partner than for married women during approximately the first five years of the relationship (Figure 2). Perhaps some cohabiting women decided to terminate an unintended pregnancy because they felt that the relationship was not yet ready for childbearing, whereas it may be less likely for married women to feel that way. However, only a very small difference in abortion levels remained after the first five years of co-residence. This is in line with studies showing that cohabiting couples tend to become similar to married couples over time, even if the initial decision to cohabit may have been only a small step beyond dating.

Conclusions

This study identified the characteristics of women that jointly affect the likelihood of experiencing an abortion and ending a romantic relationship. Such characteristics may include, for instance, personality, attitudes, and beliefs. Given that there was an elevated likelihood of obtaining an abortion around the time of a divorce, care should be taken in ensuring that women who face this difficult experience receive the family planning services and counselling they need. Overall, however, abortion rates in Finland are low compared to most other Western countries with liberal abortion legislation, indicating that the family planning health care system and sexuality education provided in schools cater satisfactorily to women’s needs.

References

Berg, Venla, Anna Rotkirch, Heini Väisänen, and Markus Jokela. 2013. ‘Personality Is Differentially Associated with Planned and Non-Planned Pregnancies’. Journal of Research in Personality 47 (4):296–305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.01.010.

Ellison, Christopher G., Samuel Echevarría, and Brad Smith. 2005. ‘Religion and Abortion Attitudes Among U.S. Hispanics: Findings from the 1990 Latino National Political Survey*’. Social Science Quarterly 86 (1):192–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2005.00298.x.

Hess, Jennifer A., and Justin D. Rueb. 2005. ‘Attitudes toward Abortion, Religion, and Party Affiliation among College Students’. Current Psychology 24 (1):24–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-005-1002-0.

Jones, Rachel K., and Kathryn Kost. 2007. ‘Underreporting of Induced and Spontaneous Abortion in the United States: An Analysis of the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth’. Studies in Family Planning 38 (3):187–197. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4465.2007.00130.x.

Lillard, Lee A., and Linda J. Waite. 1993. ‘A Joint Model of Marital Childbearing and Marital Disruption’. Demography 30 (4):653–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/2061812.

Steele, Fiona, Constantinos Kallis, Harvey Goldstein, and Heather Joshi. 2005. ‘The Relationship between Childbearing and Transitions from Marriage and Cohabitation in Britain’. Demography 42 (4):647–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/4147333.

Väisänen, Heini. 2017. ‘The Timing of Abortions, Births, and Union Dissolutions in Finland’. Demographic Research 37 (28):889–916. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2017.37.28.

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