The geography of relationships in Sweden: Developments in geographical proximity between couples and their parents, 1980-2007.

This study examines geographical distance between couples in family formation ages and their older parents using Swedish administrative register data. We look at all unions who gave birth to a 1st child between 1980 and 2007 and measure the distance to the four grandparents of the newly born child. We study the geographical distance to the man'€™s and the woman'€™s parents. The focus of the paper is to examine how education and migration interact and differ by gender. In the period of the study tertiary education expanded in a significant way and women moved from being under-represented to being over-represented in higher education. We show how changing patterns of educational patterns by gender has influenced the geography of inter-generational relationships in Sweden. The role of changing educational hypergamy and assortative mating as female educational achievement increased is also examined.