“SWEDEN AND THE FAILURE OF EUROPEAN
FAMILY POLICY”
BY ALLAN CARLSON*
“Sweden has solved the population and family problems of modern
societies. The depopulation that threatens all of the developed, industrial
world has been countered there by an aggressive, feminist-inspired
reconstruction of the family and by the single-minded pursuit of gender
equality in all other aspects of social, cultural, and economic life.”
These two sentences represent the essence of the dominant family
policy vision emerging within the European Union. They are advanced by
most European policy experts with an almost religious zeal. As Jean-Claude
Chesnois summarizes, “in Sweden,…empowerment of women insures
against a very low birth rate.”1 With Sweden especially in mind, sociologist
Peter McDonald asserts that “[i]n a context of high gender equity in
individual-oriented institutions, higher gender equity in family-oriented
_____________________________________________________________
*Allan Carlson is President of The Howard Center for Family, Religion &
Society and Distinguished Fellow in Family Policy at the Family Research Council. His
books include The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the
Interwar Population Crisis and Fractured Generations: Crafting a Family Policy for
Twenty-First Century America, both available from Transaction.
2
institutions will tend to raise fertility.”2 J.M. Hoem links Sweden’s success
to a “softening” of “the effects of women’s labor force participation on their
life sufficiently to reduce the inherent role conflict [relative to motherhood]
to a manageable level.”3 Other recent articles claim to show that the gender
equality provisions of Sweden’s generous parental leave benefit, which push
fathers into staying at home with infants while the mothers work, actually
increase the odds of having a second or third child.4 Referring to Sweden,
Paul Demeny concludes that “[f]ew social policies enjoy greater unqualified
support from demographers and sociologists than those seeking” to make
“participation of women in the labor force compatible with raising
children.”5
Of course, the deeper source of anxiety driving these analysts is the
plummeting fertility of the European peoples, a continent-wide
development. In the year 2000, the whole of Europe (from Iceland to
European Russia) recorded a Total Fertility Rate of only 1.37, roughly
meaning that the average European woman will bear 1.37 children during
her lifetime, only 65 percent of the level needed to replace a generation. In
that same year, 2000, 17 European nations already recorded an absolute
decline in numbers, with deaths outnumbering births. Within two decades,
all European nations—with the possible exception of tiny Iceland—will
3
predictably be in the same circumstance. Some regions of Spain (such as
Catalonia and the Basque country), of Italy (including Rome, Venicia, and
Tuscany), and of Germany (such as Saxony) have total fertility rates well
below 1.0. In Northern Europe, marriage is increasingly rare, replaced by
cohabitation; in Southern Europe, young adults increasingly avoid both
marriage and cohabitation, refusing to form childbearing unions of any sort.
This is the essence of the joint European family and population crisis of the
21st Century.6
We can see an extreme illustration of this crisis and its geopolitical
implications by comparing the populations—past, present, and future—of
two nations: Russia and the poor, Middle-Eastern, Muslim nation of Yemen.
In 1950, the territory that now composes Russia had a population of 102.7
million. Following the disasters of World Wars I and II, there was a large
surplus of females over males; still, the population showed some signs of the
“pyramid” typical to a growing nation. Yemen, in contrast, was a tiny
nation of 4.3 million, with only 4% of the Russian population figure.
By the year 2000, sharp fertility decline was evident among the
Russians, with shrinking numbers of children. Still, because of past
momentum, its overall population had climbed to 145.5 million. Yemen,
4
meanwhile, with a total fertility rate of about 7.6 during these years, had
grown to 18.3 million, a four-fold increase over 1950.
For a projection to the year 2050, we turn to median-level calculations
from United Nations demographers. Here, the U.N. predicts (I think
implausibly) an increase in Russia’s TFR of 50 percent by 2050. Even so,
Russia’s population tumbles by 40 million, to only 104 million, leaving a
nation heavily tilted toward the elderly. The U.N. demographers also project
a decline in Yemeni fertility by over 50 percent (also, I think, implausibly)
to a TFR of 3.35. Even so, Yemen’s population would still grow to 102
million, almost equal to that of Russia!
We might also compare the 25 nations of the expanded European
Union to 25 Muslim countries of North Africa and West Asia. Again, using
very optimistic assumptions for Europe (a rise in the TFR of 30 percent to
1.82 and the annual entry of 500,000 immigrants), the European population
still falls from 451 million in 2000 to 401 million in 2050; while the
population of North Africa and West Asia more than doubles from 587
million in 2000 to nearly 1.3 billion in 2050. If these numbers prove to be
true, the migratory pressures on Europe from these nations, which are
already large, will become enormous, indeed uncontrollable.
5
And so, Sweden now charges to Europe’s rescue, with claims of a
unique solution to the joint family and population crisis, a solution which is
applicable to all of Europe. Recently, the Swedish Institute—what might be
called that government’s propaganda arm on social and cultural matters—
published a paper entitled “Gender Equality—A Key to Our Future?” The
author, Lena Sommestad, is professor of economic history at Uppsala
University and director of the Swedish Institute for Future Studies. This
short document perfectly outlines the Swedish family policy model for the
European future.
Professor Sommestad’s essay claims that Europe’s challenge of
declining birth rates, population aging, tumbling marriage rates, and rising
out-of-wedlock births has two sources: female emancipation and “a crisis of
the traditional European male breadwinner family.” She says that nations
such as Germany, Italy, and Spain, which have tried to protect or shore up
the male breadwinner and his homemaking wife, have failed to understand
the irrelevance of these roles for the future, and have paid the price with
extremely low fertility.7
Sweden, in contrast, has recognized women’s full emancipation and
complete gender equality as “social facts,” and as the keys to a sustainable
future. Professor Sommestad points to the theories of Alva Myrdal from the
6
1930’s; she had also argued that under modern conditions, the breadwinnerhomemaker model, premised on a family wage for fathers, could no longer
produce a sufficient number of children. Myrdal instead insisted that
“declining fertility rates should be fought with increased gender equality.”
This idea, Professor Sommestad admits, went dormant in Sweden during the
1940’s and 1950’s when, during a time of affluence, male-breadwinner
families become common in Sweden (another author calls this “the era of
the Swedish housewife”). However, “[f]rom the 1960s and onwards, a
growing number of Swedish women returned to gainful employment, and by
the early 1970’s, the two-breadwinner norm had been firmly established.”8
Today, Sommestad continues:
Swedish gender equality policies build on a strong
tradition of pro-natalist and supportive social
policies….No entitlements are targeted at women
in their capacity as wives. The state uses separate
taxation, generous public day-care provision for
pre-school children, and extensive programmes of
parental leave to encourage married
women/mothers to remain at gainful employment.
Revealingly, Professor Sommestad argues that “[P]opulation ageing,
problematic as it is, may prove to be a window of opportunity for radical
gender-equality reform.” Feminists, she says, “must overcome their
traditional suspicion of demographic arguments and develop [instead] a new,
progressive population discourse.” During the 1930’s, Alva Myrdal
7
proposed using the birth rate crisis as “a battering ram” for radical feminist
social reform. Dr. Sommestad now does so again, although this time on a
larger European canvas. She claims:
…that birth rates are particularly low in countries
that support traditional patterns of marriage and
breadwinning….[S]ince the early 1980’s, high
birth rates in the industrialized world have tended
to go hand in hand with a high level of female
labour-force participation….In short: women’s
access to the labour market appears to be a
prerequisite for a higher birth rate.
Dr. Sommestad also adds “that countries that do not stigmatize non-marital
cohabitation or extra-marital births have a better chance of maintaining
higher fertility levels.” Moreover, the Swedish model shows that to raise the
birth rate, men must also take on “a greater responsibility” for child care.9
In sum, using less lofty language, the Swedish model of family policy
sees radical feminism as the answer to the fertility crisis. If European
peoples want to survive in the 21st century, she argues, they should eliminate
the full-time mother and homemaker, crush the family wage idea, abolish the
home as an economic institution, welcome out-of-wedlock births and
cohabitation, push all women—especially actual or potential mothers—into
the labor force, enforce strict gender equality in all areas of life, re-engineer
men into childcare-givers, and embrace expensive state child allowances,
8
parental leave, and public day care programs. The result—almost by
magic—will be more babies!
These are not just the ideas of academics, I hasten to add. In its
official statement of policy toward the European Union, the Swedish
government summarizes its goal in one sentence: “We want to see a Union
that is open, effective and gender equal.” Let me underscore this: the
attainment of the feminist agenda is Sweden’s primary purpose within the
EU. This government statement from April 2004 elaborates:
Sweden has a particular responsibility for
increasing the pace of gender equality efforts in
Europe. Decisions have already been taken to the
effect that an equal opportunity perspective shall
permeate all aspects of the EU’s employment
strategy. Gender equality aspects should be
integrated into all areas of policy. Modern family
policies that promote the supply of labour
regarding both women and men and which enable
family life to be combined with a professional life,
are needed in order to meet the demographic
challenges Europe faces.10
Moreover, official documents pouring out of the European Commission
emphasize ever greater attention to gender equality and harmonization of
European family policy around the Swedish model, stressing “an
individualization of rights” and a “new gender balance in working life”
involving basic “changes in family structure.”11
9
So what shall we make out of all this? To begin with, I do want to
admit that there are aspects of the modern Swedish model of family policy
that are attractive, at least to this social conservative. To begin with, the
Swedish system does do a better job of bonding newborns to mothers and
fathers, in the short run. The generous “parents insurance” program
provides new parents with 390 days of paid leave, at 90 percent of salary,
and another 90 days at a lower allowance. This means that virtually all
Swedish children enjoy full time parental care during their first 13 months of
life (compared to only a third of infants in the United States). This also
allows new Swedish mothers to breastfeed their newborns. Again, the
majority of Swedish babies enjoy the health-giving effects of mothers milk
for at least six months, compared to only 20 percent in the United States.
And even some of the more coercive aspects of Sweden’s parents insurance
program—such as the requirement that fathers take 45 days of the paid
parental leave for the couple to receive the full benefit—these have their
human side: it turns out that Swedish fathers have a strong preference
toward taking their parental leave during Sweden’s elk-hunting season!12
But that is about it. For the other claims by advocates for the Swedish
model—particularly the claim that this approach will be Europe’s
demographic salvation—quite simply vanish under scrutiny.
10
To begin with, the Swedish model of family policy has not solved the
birth dearth in that land. Assertions that it has rely on a peculiar
development during the 1988-1993 period, which has since proven
ephemeral. Consider these Total Fertility Rates for Sweden, by year:
1960-64:
1965-69:
1970-74:
1975-79:
1983:
1987:
1991:
1995:
1999:
2003:
2.30
2.21
1.89
1.67
1.61
1.88
2.11
1.74
1.60
1.54
As you can see, during the last decade of Sweden’s “breadwinner
father/homemaking mother” era, 1960-69, the nation had a fertility rate well
above the replacement level of 2.10. Contrary to assertions by Alva Myrdal
and Lena Sommestad, this “family policy” system clearly succeeded relative
to population. However, once Sweden implemented the new model built on
the deconstruction of marriage, out-of-wedlock births, working mothers,
parents insurance, and day care, fertility fell by 30 percent to 1.61 by 1983.
However, during the late 1980’s, the number apparently started climbing
again, reaching 2.11 in 1991, just above the replacement level. Progressive
social analysts around the European continent shouted hosannas! Sweden
had found the answer! But it did not last. By 1993, fertility was falling
11
again, and by 2003, Sweden—at 1.54—was close to the European Union
average. Indeed, in the year 2000, Sweden joined that grim group of nations
where deaths actually exceed births: more coffins than cradles.13
It turns out that Sweden’s “success” in the early 1990’s was a
statistical fluke. A change in policy regarding eligibility for parents
insurance, called a “speed premium,” had the one-time effect of reducing the
spacing between first and second births; but this change did not significantly
increase the total number of children born per family.14 Judged empirically,
then, the Swedish model simply does not work.
Second, Professor Sommestad’s brief history of the introduction of
Sweden’s new family policy during the 1960’s grossly overlooks its radical
and coercive nature. As honest Swedish feminist historians have admitted,
there was no pressure for change from young Swedish housewives and
mothers during the mid-1960’s. By all accounts, they were largely happy
with their lot. Instead, the pressure came from other directions.
Government planners in the Labor Ministry foresaw labor shortages in
Sweden’s future. Instead of opening the doors to greater immigration,
though, they decided to pull Sweden’s young mothers into the workplace.15
At the same time, the radical wing of Sweden’s ruling Social
Democratic party took power, inaugurating what feminist historian Yvonne
12
Hirdman calls Sweden’s “Red Years,” 1967-1976. As their heart was a
massive “gender turn” that would radically alter the nature of marriage and
family in Sweden. In 1968, the Social Democrats joined with the labor
unions in a joint report concluding that “there are…strong reasons for
making the two-breadwinner family the norm” in all welfare and social
policies. The next year, our old friend Alva Myrdal chaired a major panel
“On Equality,” which concluded that “[i]n the society of the future,…the
point of departure must be that every adult is responsible for his/her own
support. Benefits previously inherited in married status should be
eliminated.” The Report also called for an end to tax policies that favored
marriage.16 In 1969, a Ministry of Justice committee declared Swedish
marriage law “clearly anachronistic,” based as it was on the now discredited
Christian notion of “two becoming one flesh.” Instead, the law should focus
on the new imperative of “personal fulfillment.” In 1971, Sweden’s
Parliament abolished the income tax system favoring marriage, so giving
this land the most “fully individualized taxation system” in the world.
According to analyst Sven Steinmo, this single change “more or less
eradicated” the traditional home in Sweden.17 The Family Law Reform of
1973 introduced “no-fault” divorce, deeming it “only natural that if one of
the spouses is dissatisfied, he or she may demand a divorce.” All social and
13
welfare benefits tied to marriage were abolished.18 By the time the Social
Democrats were driven out of office in 1976, their forced revolution in
family life was complete; the Swedes had been re-engineered into a postfamily order.
Moreover, Sweden—and Europe as a whole—now finds itself in new
circumstances where the old calculations no longer apply. In the year 2000,
a team of demographers reports in Science magazine, Europe’s population
reached a vital turning point. Until then, although fertility was abnormally
low, the overall age structure of the continent still had a “positive
momentum;” that is, long term stability could still be gained if women raised
their average family size to slightly over two. In 2000, however, prior
decades of low fertility produced a new effect. Europe’s population entered
into “negative momentum,” which means that a TFR of 2.1 will no longer
suffice to gain even stability. A TFR approaching 4.0 would now be needed
to achieve the same end.19
Further, it is becoming increasingly clear that forced “gender
equality” can never be the solution to fertility decline, no matter how hard
feminist analysts work to cook the numbers. For example, a team of
analysts recently noted that the key components to the Swedish model—the
reconfiguring of women’s education into equality with men, the movement
14
of women into previously “all male” jobs, the deconstruction of marriage—
are the very same policies which have generated dramatic declines in the
fertility of women in the developing world. Contra Alva Myrdal and
Professor Sommestad, you cannot turn a cause of fertility decline into its
cure, no matter how much money you throw at the problem.20 Indeed, no
less an authority than Joseph Chamie, Director of the Population Division of
the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, concluded
earlier this year:
While many governments, intergovernmental
organizations, non-governmental organizations,
and individuals may strongly support gender
equality at work and in the home as a fundamental
principle and desirable goal, it is not at all evident
how having men and women participate equally in
employment, parenting and household
responsibilities will raise low levels of fertility.
On the contrary, the equal participation of men and
women in the labor force, child rearing, and
housework points precisely in the opposite
direction, i.e., below replacement fertility.
The Swedish model flies in the face of other well documented causes
of the decline in fertility. John C. Caldwell, one of the world’s most eminent
demographers, recently examined the dozens of rival theories behind what
he calls “the fertility crisis in modern societies.” He explores the perils of a
liberal economy which create doubts among women whether they should
devote themselves to children. He dissects the special circumstances behind
15
fertility decline found in Southern, Eastern, and Central Europe and in Asia.
And he considers the effects of varied social policies on fertility, looking for
common threads. He concludes “that a social order that does not reproduce
itself will be replaced by another” and that the Swedish model works no
better than any other social welfare model in countering depopulation. In
the end, he admits that he can do no better than repeat the conclusion of
Kingsley Davis from 1937, when the Western world faced a similar
challenge: “the family is not indefinitely adaptable to modern society, and
this explains the declining birth rate.”21
Under this explanation, the Swedish model stands doubly condemned.
First, it represents an attempt to engineer a wholly new family system, which
can only fail in face of the constants of human nature grounded in the natural
family. And second, the Swedish model represents a forced march of all its
citizens into modern urban-industrialized society: the very problem to be
overcome.
Taking another broad look at Europe’s population crisis, Paul Demeny
underscores how the two-income, or two-career, family norm eliminates all
incentives to have larger families:
…despite flexible work hours, generous paid
vacation, father’s temporary home leave to care for
an infant or a sick child, or other similar benefits—
the actual chosen number of children in two-
16
working-parent families gravitates
toward…families that are either childless or have
only one or two children.
He adds that as low fertility continues, the elderly base of the electorate
grows, making it highly unlikely that state welfare benefits could ever be
rechanneled toward young families. Demeny concludes:
What can be taken as highly probable is the failure
of the now prevailing orthodoxy governing
European social policies. These policies will fail
to increase fertility up to replacement levels and
thus will fail to prevent the long term numerical
decline of the European population.22
Finally, Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe underscores that
“secularization,” defined as “the decrease of adherence to organized
religion,” still serves as “the most powerful variable at the outset of fertility
decline” and “the one with the longest lasting effect or the highest degree of
persistence.”23 He sees plunging European fertility during the late 20th
Century as simply continuing the “long term shift in the Western ideational
system” away from the values affirmed by Christian teaching (namely
“responsibility, sacrifice, altruism, and sanctity of long-term commitments”)
and toward a militant “secular individualism” focused on the desires of the
self.24 And as you might guess by now, Sweden leads Europe in measures
of secularism and feminist inspired individualism.
17
In sum, 21st Century Sweden embodies, even cherishes, the very
social, economic, and cultural qualities that cause fertility decline. And we
also know that the “magic” of the Swedish model does not really work. It is
a dead-end.
And yet, it is true that Europe’s other, and older, family policy
model—a system premised on the breadwinner/homemaker model of the
1950’s—has also failed to work since 1970. Still found to some degree in
Germany, this model encourages the full-time maternal care of children
through maternity benefits, child allowances, and homemaker pensions. All
the same, Germany’s TFR stands at 1.3, 15 percent below Sweden’s already
low figure. For some reason this approach, which had worked effectively in
the decades following World War II, no longer does. I suspect that
“secularization,” the retreat from faith, is the cause. In any case, this model
also seems to hold little real promise for the future.
Might Europe as a whole look elsewhere for answers? Is there any
modern nation that has beat the depopulation problem? Yes, as a matter-offact, there is. The surprise, perhaps, is that it is the United States of
America. As John Caldwell suggests, instead of studying Europe,
“[p]erhaps what [really] needs explanation is the curiously high fertility of
the USA.”25 Indeed, while the U.S. led the Western world in fertility decline
18
between 1964 and 1976, the U.S. birth rate began climbing again during the
1980’s. By 2000, the USA could claim a Total Fertility Rate of 2.14, by far
the highest in the developed world, and 22 percent above the 1976 level.
One retort is that this must be due to America’s greater ethnic
diversity, particularly to the flow of high fertility Hispanic immigrants into
the USA. This is part of the puzzle, but not all. In fact, American women of
European descent actually recorded the greatest increase in fertility between
1976 and 2000, rising 28 percent to 2.114. Another retort is that this
American difference must be due to a rising number of out-of-wedlock
births. Again, this is part of the explanation, especially before 1995, but not
the whole story. Rather, marital fertility has also risen: by 11 percent since
1995. As The Economist magazine ably summarizes: “Demographic forces
are pulling America and Europe apart…America’s fertility rate is rising;
Europe’s is falling. America’s immigration outstrips Europe’s….America’s
population will soon be getting younger. Europe’s is aging.” The
Economist predicts a U.S. population of 500 million by 2050, an 80 percent
increase over the figure for 2000.26 Indeed, perhaps the European nations
should be looking to America, not to Sweden, for answers.
If they did, what explanations might they find for this American
exceptionalism? Simply put, pockets of Americans have crafted new ways,
19
often in spite of poor public policy, to counter the modern forces driving
family fragmentation and fertility decline in the developed world.
To begin with, the last three decades have witnessed a remarkable
experiment in the de-industrialization of a key aspect of American family
life: namely, education. Starting back in the 1840’s, the states had taken
over the schooling of children, using industrial organization to displace
parents as the chief educators of the young. Demographer Norman Ryder
has shown how this modern interruption of the parent-child bond was critical
to the emergence of both “modernity” and fertility decline. There was a
struggle, he reports, between the traditional family and the modern state for
the minds of the young. The state school served as “the vehicle for
communicating “state morality” and a modern political mythology designed
to displace those of families.27 And there is clear evidence that this spread
of state schooling was closely tied to a sharp decline in family size among
Americans.28
However, starting in the mid-1970’s, a growing number of American
parents—for various reasons—turned to home schooling. At first, they
faced hostile state authorities: hundreds were imprisoned for seeking to
reclaim this pre-modern family task. Yet the movement grew, and by the
early 1990’s had regained this natural right in all 50 states. By 2004, over
20
two million American children were in home schools. And relative to
family life, there was a significant result. Virtually all home schooled
students were in married-couple homes. And 77 percent of home schooling
mothers did not work for pay, compared to 30 percent nationwide.
Importantly, the fertility of these families was substantially higher. Sixtytwo percent had three or more children, compared to only 20 percent
nationwide. And slightly over a third (33.5 percent) had four or more
children, compared to a mere 6 percent in all homes with children.29 By
rejecting “modern” state education, and by embracing “pre-modern”
approaches, American families grew stronger and larger.
Second, America also rediscovered about 20 years ago an alternative
to state child allowances and paid parental leave that has a positive fertility
effect. Specifically, after two decades of neglect, the U.S. Congress in 1986
nearly doubled the value of the personal tax exemption for children to
$2,000 per child, and indexed its value to inflation. Repeated studies have
found that European child allowances—where the state pays mothers a
monthly stipend for each of their children—have no significant positive
effect on fertility. However, there is strong evidence of a “robust” positive
relationship between the real, after inflation value of the tax exemption for
children and family size. Economist Leslie Whittington has actually
21
calculated an astonishing elasticity of birth probability with respect to the
exemption of between .839 and 1.31. This means that a one percent increase
in the exemption’s real value results in about a 1 percent increase in birth
probability in families.30
Why this difference? It appears that allowing families to keep more
of what they earn while raising children—that is, turning children into little
tax shelters—has a positive, even life-affirming psychological effect on
parents that money coming from the government cannot replicate. In any
case, the significant uptick in overall American fertility coincides with the
sharp increase in the exemption’s value in 1986. More recently, the rise in
marital fertility, starting in 1996, correlates precisely with the introduction of
the new Child Tax Credit that year. It seems that pro-family tax cuts work!
Third, Americans stand almost alone among modern nations as a
people bound to active religious faith; and active faith commonly translates
into larger families. At the most dramatic level, some faith communities still
on the margins of American life—the Old Order Amish found in rural
communities in 20 states, the Hutterites in Montana and North Dakota, and
Hassidic Jews in New York, Cleveland, and other cities—continue to report
average completed family size in excess of six children. Closer to the
mainstream, the fertility rate of the state of Utah is nearly twice the national
22
average, reflecting a TFR among Latter-day Saints or Mormons there of
about 4.0. Surveys also show that “fundamentalist Protestants” and
traditional “Latin Mass” Catholics who attend religious services at least once
a week also record higher total fertility.31
Finally, Americans are generally held less hostage to the deadly
dogmas of pure “gender equality” than are the “Swedenized” Europeans.
As the University of Virginia’s Stephen Rhodes’ new book, Taking Sex
Differences Seriously, reminds us, women and men are hardwired to be
different. Denying these differences can only result in inhuman, indeed
violent acts, particularly against existing and potential children.32 After
decades of work by feminist ideologues to re-engineer human nature,
Americans remain resilient, open to the natural power of gender
complementarity. For example, despite massive Federal financial
preferences and incentives for putting small children in day care, a full third
of young American mothers still find ways to remain home full-time with
their pre-school children. And this proportion appears to be growing again.
The imperatives of biology, of human nature, are still in play in our land.
The Swedish model, resting on state child allowances, the nearmandatory employment of mothers, parents insurance, day care, and gender
equality in all aspects of human life, has failed. The current fixation of
23
European scholars and policymakers on this response to depopulation is both
a delusion and a death wish. If Europe’s political leaders seriously want to
renew their nations, they need look elsewhere: even, perhaps, to “the
American model” involving the empowerment of families through home
schooling, tax cuts sensitive to marriage and family size, religious belief,
and respect for the natural complementarity of man and woman, wife and
husband. The issue is, after all, a matter of the life or death of nations.
24
ENDNOTES
1
Jean-Claude Chesnois, “Fertility, Family, and Social Policy in Contemporary Europe,” Population and
Development Review 22 (Dec. 1996): 733.
2
Peter McDonald, “Gender Equity in Theories of Fertility Transition,” Population and Development
Review 26 (September 2000): 438.
3
J.M. Hoem, “Social Policy and Recent Fertility Change in Sweden,” Population and Development
Review 16 (1990): 735-48.
4
Livia Sz. Olah, Gendering Family Dynamics: The Case of Sweden and Hungary (Stockholm:
Stockholm University Demographic Unit—Dissertation Series, 2001); and Ann-Sofie Duvakler and Gunnar
Andersson, “Gender Equality and Fertility in Sweden: An Investigation of the Impact of the Father’s Use of
Parental Leave on Continued Childbearing,” (2003); cited in: Gerda Neyer, “Family Policies and Low
Fertility in Western Europe,” Max-Planck Institute for Demographic Research Working Paper #2003-021
(July 2003).
5
Paul Demeny, “Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,”
Population and Development Review 29 (March 2003): 22.
6
See: Paul Demeny, “Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century,”
Population and Development Review 29 (March 2003): 1-3.
7
Lena Sommestad, “Gender Equality—A Key to Our Future?” Published by The Swedish Institute, 1
September 2001. Found at http:www.sweden.se/templates/cs/Print_Article_2328.aspx 11/8/2004
8
Sommestad, “Gender Equality,” p. 2.
9
Ibid., pp. 2-3.
10
Government Offices of Sweden, “EU Policy” (29 April 2004), at: http://www.sweden.gov.se
(11/8/2004).
11
European Commission, “Modernizing and Improving Social Protection in the European Union:
Communication from the Commission” (1997); and Herbert Krieger, “Family Life in Europe—Results of
Recent Surveys on Quality of Life in Europe,” Family Paper #8, The European Commission.
12
See: Kristina Hultman, “Mothers, fathers and gender equality in Sweden” published by The Swedish
Institute (6 Mar 2004); at http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/Print_Article_8043.aspx.
13
Demeny, “Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” p. 2.
14
See: Britta Hoem and Jan M. Hoem, “Sweden’s family policies and roller-coaster fertility,” Journal of
Population Problems (Tokyo) 52 (1996): 1-22.
15
Dorothy McBride Stetson and Amy Maxur, eds., Comparative State Feminism (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications, 1995): 241.
16
Alva Myrdal, et al, Towards Equality: The Alva Myrdal Report to the Swedish Social Democratic
Party (Stockholm: Prisma, 1972 [1969]: 17, 38, 64, 82-84.
17
Sven Steinmo, “Social Democracy vs. Socialism: Goal Adaptation in Social Democratic Sweden,”
Politics & Society 16 (Dec. 1988): 430.
18
Michael Bogdan and Eva Ryrstedt, “Marriage in Swedish Family Law and Swedish Conflicts of Law,”
Family Law Quarterly 29 (Fall 1995): 678-79.
19
Wolfang Lutz, Brian C. O’Neill, Sergei Sherbov, “Europe’s Population at a Turning Point,” Science
299 (28 March 2003): 1991-92.
20
Christos Bagavos and Claude Martin, Low Fertility, Families and Public Policies: Synthesis Report.
Annual Seminar, Seville, Spain, 15-16 September 20000 (Vienna: Austrian Institute for Family Studies,
2001): 15.
21
John C. Caldwell and Thomas Schindlmeyer, “Explanations of the Fertility Crisis in Modern Societies:
A Search for Commonalities,” Population Studies 57 (2003): 241-63.
22
Demeny, “Population Policy Dilemmas in Europe,” pp. 22-25.
23
Ron J. Lesthawghe, The Decline of Belgian Fertility, 1800-1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1977): 230.
25
24
Ron J. Lesthaeghe, “A Century of Demographic and Cultural Change in Western Europe,” Population
and Development Review 9 (1983): 429.
25
Caldwell and Schindlmagr, “Explanations of the Fertility Crisis in Modern Societies,” p. 256.
26
“Half a Billion Americans?” The Economist (August 22, 2002).
27
Norman Ryder, “Fertility and Family Structure,” Population Bulletin of the United Nations 15 (1983):
29-30.
28
Avery M. Guest and Stewart E. Tolnags, “Children’s Roles and Fertility: Late Nineteenth Century
United States,” Social Science History 7 (1983): 355-80.
29
Lawrence M. Rudner, “Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School
Students in 1998,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 7 (23 March 1999): 7-8, 12.
30
Leslie Whittington, “Taxes and the Family: The Impact of the Tax Exemption for Dependents on
Marital Fertility.” Demography 29 (May 1992): 220-21; and L.A. Whittington, J. Alan, and H.E. Peters,
“Fertility and the Personal Exemption: Implicit Pronatalist Policy in the United States,” The American
Economic Review 80 (June 1990): 545-56.
31
See: F. Althous, “Differences in Fertility of Catholics and Protestants Are Related to Timing and
Prevalence of Marriage,” Family Planning Perspectives 24 (Sept/Oct. 1992).
32
Steven E. Rhoads, Taking Sex Differences Seriously (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004).