Childbearing across Partnerships in Australia, the United States, Norway and Sweden

Abstract

This paper compares mothers' experience of having children with more than one partner in two liberal welfare regimes (the United States and Australia) and two social democratic regimes (Sweden and Norway). We use survey-based union and birth histories in Australia and the United States and data from national population registers in Norway and Sweden to estimate the likelihood of experiencing childbearing across partnerships at any point in the childbearing career. We find that births with new partners constitute a substantial proportion of all births in each country we study. Despite quite different arrangements for social welfare, the determinants of childbearing across partnerships are very similar. Women who had their first birth at a very young age or who are less well educated are most likely to have children with different partners. Socioeconomic differentials in childbearing across partnerships appeared to be stronger in the United States, but not in comparison to differentials in childbearing in the same union. Thus, no strong evidence was found for a steeper educational gradient in the liberal as opposed to social democratic welfare regimes. The risk of childbearing across partnerships increased dramatically in all countries from the 1980s to the 2000s, and the educational differential also increased; again, however, the increases were not associated with welfare regime.