Fertility of Fast-Track Professionals in Sweden, 1991–2005: A Longitudinal Register-Based Study on How Birth Events Vary among Groups of High-Achieving Women and Men

Maria A. Stanfors, Lund University

This paper studies the fertility of fast-track professionals and explores how continued childbearing varies among high-achieving men and women in different occupational groups. We focus on the situation of three particular fast-track professional groups (e.g., lawyers, medical doctors and PhDs), that face quite different career structures and work environments that may affect their fertility. The determinants of second and higher-order births are analyzed multivariately using longitudinal data on couples from different population registers in Sweden, 1991–2005. Preliminary results indicate that career choice affects higher-order fertility in a highly gendered way, in line with hypotheses about how educational and occupational orientation may reflect different degrees of work-family conflicts that exist in different fields. The results also indicate that the couple context is very important as it reflects the relative power balance within the couple. Own as well as couple income seems to have different effects in different intervals.