In many Western countries, divorce among older age groups has slowly increased. One potential explanation is the increase in the diversity of family structures, such as a blend of joint children, stepchildren and stepgrandchildren. We investigate the association between multigenerational family complexity and late-life divorce in Sweden (60 +). Multigenerational family complexity includes a couple's joint children/grandchildren and any children/grandchildren to whom one of the partners is a parent/grandparent, i.e. when the female partner, male partner or both partners have children/grandchildren from previous unions. Using Swedish register data, we find that couples with step relationships are more likely to divorce than those with only biological ties, that couples with only joint children or grandchildren have the lowest late-life divorce risk, and that couples with two sets of stepchildren face a higher risk than those with one. We also find that joint children in stepfamilies lower divorce risk among couples where the female partner has children from previous unions and for couples with both joint and step grandchildren, regardless of the stepchild's parental lineage. Lineage patterns of family complexity in the third generation operate somewhat differently than those in the second generation do. We provide novel insights into how biological and stepties as well as maternal and paternal lineages across generations are related to divorce risk later in life.

As societies age and late-life divorce becomes more common, older adult divorcees will constitute an increasingly important demographic group. Yet, divorce for older adults differs from mid-life divorce. In this paper, we look at housing tenure transitions around the time of divorce and examine the extent to which housing patterns observed for late-life divorce resemble those among mid-life divorcees. We use Swedish register data to analyze housing shifts during divorce for older adults aged 60-78. Using data on the discontinuation of marriages or civil partnerships between 1995 and 2013, we identify 30,000 late-life divorces. We analyze gender differences in the probability of residential mobility and the likelihood of ownership and rental tenure. We find that women are more likely to move. Our study also highlights gender differences in the effects of late-life divorce on homeownership, showing that women are more likely to be tenant owners, while men are more likely to be owners of single-family housing units.

This chapter is about online discussions on shared physical custody in Sweden and Finland, two countries where shared physical custody is most common in the world. Shared physical custody refers to a system in which both parents take care of the child(ren) equally after separation. In practical terms, this means that both parents need to juggle family and work life instead of relying on financial contributions to compensate for fewer caring responsibilities. The chapter links the prevalence of shared physical custody to the spread of the second demographic transition and increased individualisation in society. Through its analysis of small story narratives, the chapter identifies three typical themes: competition over a just financial contribution, competition over children’s best interests and attention, and parents’ autonomy over their parenting style. Their findings point out the usefulness of online discussion to study emergent motives and interpersonal dynamics in intimate relations. 

The drivers behind the large-scale patterns of COVID-19 infections are largely unknown. Earlier studies have shown a connection between continentality, a measure for oceanic air influence over land, where lowest continentality implies highest oceanic influence, and COVID-19. In Europe, open west coasts with lowest continentality had the lowest COVID-19 incidence. We test if this applies to the US. We use a combination of geographical information systems and statistics, and data for every US county, to assess the connection between the COVID-19 death incidence and continentality. We normalize for known factors that influence COVID-19 local scale death incidence, namely the socio-economic status, population aged over 65, and the index of urbanization (crowding). We find that open west-coasts in the US, where continentality index values are low, had the lowest COVID-19 death incidence, rising non-linearly with rising continentality values, with highest death incidence in areas with the highest continentality, in north-central USA. The influence of oceanic air was associated with lower COVID-19 death incidence on the west coast of the US. These findings suggest that oceanic influence may be an important environmental determinant of spatial variations in COVID-19 death incidence and provide a contribution to studies on the relationship between oceans and health.

This paper studies the interrelation between birth order and emigration adopting a family fixed-effects approach. We use register data on all persons in full-siblings groups born 1970–2002 in the entire Finnish-born population, and observe their first move abroad since age 18 in the period 1987–2020. The total number of siblings is 1,352,908, the total number of sibling groups 549,842, and the total number of first moves abroad 31,192. By comparing siblings in the same family, we effectively adjust for all time-invariant confounding from unobserved or unmeasured time-invariant variables. Emigration is found to be positively associated with birth order. The hazard of emigration for second-born siblings is 1.05 that of first borns, that of third borns 1.07, and that of fourth borns 1.11. The pattern is particularly marked for emigration to countries where there is free mobility, and the association is similar for both genders. Potential explanations to the birth order pattern may be variation in personality traits, risk-taking behaviours and aspirations between siblings, or differential allocation of resources and opportunities within families. The results highlight the importance of considering birth order within the context of family dynamics and individual mobility patterns, and they need to be extended to broader settings.

Objective: The aim of this paper is to develop an understanding of how child-perceived parental support and knowledge among children in Sweden differ across ten forms of residential arrangement. Background: Shared physical custody has become an increasingly common arrangement for children in separated families in many European countries. In an international comparison, Sweden has a high rate of parental union dissolution but also the highest prevalence of shared physical custody arrangements following divorce or separation. Over a third of all children with divorced or separated parents spend an equal amount of time living in both parental households. Method: We used data from the Swedish HBSC survey from 2013/14, which are focused on children in grades 5, 7 and 9 in the Swedish comprehensive school system (n= 7360) and used perceived parental support and perceived parental knowledge scales as dependent variables in multiple ordered logistic regressions conducted separately by the sex of the parent. Results: The results show that children in shared physical custody report higher levels of parental support and knowledge than children in sole physical custody and equally high as those who live in a two- parent family. Children living in non-symmetrical physical custody arrangements report lower levels of paternal support and knowledge than children whose parents share physical custody equally. Maternal support and knowledge does not differ between children living in symmetrical and non-symmetrical shared physical custody arrangements, whereas paternal support and knowledge is lower in families where the child lives in an unequal residential sharing arrangement with the mother as the main co-residential parent. Conclusion: Post-divorce living arrangements are clearly associated with the relationship between parents and children, with children in shared physical custody reporting stronger relationships than children in sole physical custody. The cross-sectional nature of the data prevents us from drawing conclusions on causality, however.

BACKGROUND Divorce is associated with a weakened relationship between the child and the nonresident parent, usually the father. This loss of contact is likely to be even further exacerbated if this parent lives at a substantial distance from the child. OBJECTIVE This paper analyzes how the distance between children and nonresident parents, the year after a parental separation, has changed during a 40-year period in Sweden, and whether this is related to changes in child custody policies. METHODS We use Swedish population register data that includes exact geographical coordinates for children and their nonresident parents in the year after separation. We analyze how average distance and the likelihood of living very close to, or very far from, a nonresident parent has changed over this period, using OLS and logistic regression models. RESULTS Results show a gradual decrease in the distance between children and nonresident parents from the 1970s until the early 1990s, after which the trend stalled at a low level. In 2011, 50% of all children lived within 2 kilometers of their nonresident parent. We find no evidence of direct policy effects, indicated by any sudden changes in distance after the introduction of a new custody policy. High-income parents have changed their post -divorce residential patterns at a faster pace than low-income parents. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate a diffusion process where distances between children and nonresident parents gradually decreased until the 1990s. CONTRIBUTION This paper demonstrates that the change has not been directly influenced by custody law reforms promoting dual parent responsibility.

In this chapter, we identify structural features of families with shared physical custody that differ from those of nuclear families or those of families where one parent has sole physical custody, and discuss the implications for family and kin relationships. We pay particular attention to the ways in which shared physical custody alters the gendered nature of parenting and kinship. We argue that the structural features of shared physical custody create distinct contexts for parent-child and sibling relationships and produce differences in shared understandings of obligations between family members. The unique context for relationships and obligations together constitute a new family form. Our analysis generates an agenda for future research on the nature and consequences of shared physical custody.