Swedish fertility swings and public expenditure for children

This paper studies whether Swedish fertility swings and variation in public expenditure for children are related events. In the 1930s Swedish birth rates had fallen to levels close to the death rates and in public discourse this was perceived as a major social and national crisis, spurring a range of social policy reforms. While total fertility rates in Sweden have varied over large spans the completed cohort fertility rates are almost constant around 2 children per woman for women born in the 20th century. Using unique data for the years 1930-1997 on public expenditure per eligible child for schools, child allowances and child care we estimate age-specific fertility for broad age groups as a function of these variables. The results indicate that the age group 25-29 is most sensitive to variations in this public expenditure thus providing a tentative explanation of the swings in period fertility in terms of policy induced tempo variation. School expenditure is negatively correlated to fertility while child care and child allowance is positively correlated. This pattern is consistent with a quantity-quality trade-off by the parents. To check the predictive power of the model we use data from 1998-2007 and get an excellent prediction of the fertility turn-around after 1999 for all age groups except 35 and above where we tend to under-predict at the 10-year horizon. Further research along these lines is needed to uncover the causal mechanisms of these very stable correlations.Fertility; Children expenditure; Fertility factors; Sweden; Demography

Trust and investment corporations in China

A description of the formation and expansion of Chinese trust and investment corporations, including an account of their current problems and recommendations for solving them.China

Women´s Return to Work after First Birth in Sweden during 1980-2000

The goal of this study is to investigate whether and how fast Swedish women returned to work after their first birth and what were the incentives and constraints for their decisions during the latest decades when Sweden was experiencing significant fluctuations both in its economy and in its level of fertility. The analysis is conducted at individual level based on a longitudinal data set from the latest two waves (1991 and 2000) of a long-time running panel survey of "The Swedish Level-of-Living survey" (LNU). We employ the methods of event-history analysis. The findings suggest Swedish women delayed their return to paid work after the first birth in the 1990s due mainly to the gradual extensions in the parental leave benefits in the 1990s, although the economic crisis in the 1990s might result in a faster return for young mothers. In addition to the strong influences of personal and family characteristics such as age at first birth, eligibility for parental leave and father's share of parental leave, whether a woman worked or not prior to the first birth strongly influences the outcomes of her after-birth labour force participation. The study seems to suggest convergences in the timing of return to work in terms of women’s education, the sector (public or private) of employment and the size of the company, but an enlarged gap between women with high job positions and the others.Return to work; first birth