Nuptiality Trends in Sweden, 1971-1995

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this licentiate thesis is to introduce a system of annual indexes of divorce risks and marriage risks and to use the sys¬tem to display nuptiality trends for Swedish women over the years since 1971. We give special attention to the effects of children on the nuptiality behavior in that we present parity specific indexes of risks for the various civil-status changes. Our indexes are produced by an indirect standardization of register data. The thesis consists of three separate papers. The first paper displays trends in divorce risks over the years since 1971. A second paper presents a deeper examination of the effect of children on these divorce risks. Separate effects of the number of children, of premarital childbearing, and of the age of the youngest child are examined and disentangled. A final paper displays the trends in risks of marriage formation and re-formation during our study period.