Separations between parents in Sweden

In the year 2011, 41 300 children in Sweden living with their biological parents experienced a separation between their parents, a rate of 2.9 percent. The number of children that experienced a separation decreased between the year 2000 and 2005, followed by a slight increase and then once again a decrease during the last years. This study aims to find explanations for how socioeconomic and demographic changes of parents can explain the variation of separations during the first 10 years of the 21st century. This register study includes all children in Sweden living with their biological parents 1999–2011. The method used is event-history analysis using a Cox proportional hazard regression model to calculate the different risks to parental separation. The risk of parental separation varies based on the situation of the children, the family and the parents. The results show that there is a significantly higher risk of separation for children with cohabiting parents as opposed to married parents, for children with a young mother, for households with a low educational levels or if the children have foreign born parents. The decline in separations between 1999 and 2006 can be explained when studying the relative risk for parental separation and controlling for different demographic and socioeconomic variables.