Partnership dynamics and entry into parenthood: Comparison of Finnish birth cohorts 1969-2000.

During the past decade, the stability of close-to-replacement-level fertility ended in all Nordic countries, with its decline to the lowest level in Finland. It is unclear whether and how partnership dynamics have changed, and whether they play a role in fertility developments. We focus on the patterns and associations between the formation and stability of co-residential partnerships and first birth among Finnish women and men, and on whether and how these associations have changed across birth cohorts. We utilise total population register data on persons born between 1969 and 2000 in Finland, and adopt the event history method. Our results indicate that half of the women formed their first co-residential partnerships by the age of 22 years. Cohorts born in the early 1990s were the first to delay the formation of non-marital first partnerships. In contrast, first births are increasingly postponed, and the proportion of women and men, who become parents, has declined across recent cohorts. Among men, we observe higher median ages for family formation events and higher likelihoods of not forming a family. As a result of fertility decline and increase in partnership instability, for the first time, the probability of separation is higher than that of first births among partnered women born in the 1990s. Our findings show that at a behavioural level, the once close link between partnership formation and parenthood has progressively eroded across consecutive birth cohorts. Together with the ongoing tendency to delay first births, decreasing partnership stability, and first indications of delaying partnership formation, the potential of witnessing a marked increase of fertility levels in the near future is delimited. Our study's results contribute to a better understanding of the demographic mechanisms behind the decline in fertility in Finland, over the recent decade.

The Role of Neighbourhood and Workplace Ethnic Contexts in the Formation of Inter-ethnic Partnerships: A Native Majority Perspective.

Although inter-ethnic encounters take place in multiple domains of daily life, ethnic intermarriage has typically been studied in relation to places of residence but rarely in relation to workplaces. Focussing on migrants is the most common approach to the study of intermarriage, whereas focussing on native majority population is less frequent. This study investigates an extent to which the share of immigrants at the workplace establishment and in the residential neighbourhood influences the natives' likelihood of choosing a foreign-born partner. The analysis is based on longitudinal register data that cover all residents of Finland in 1999-2014. We focus on native Finnish women and men born from 1981 to 1995. We estimated a discrete-time event history model with competing risks, distinguishing the first-partnership formation with a foreign-born partner and a native-born partner. The share of immigrants in the residential neighbourhood and workplace both increase the propensity of choosing a foreign-born partner, but the share of immigrants in workplace tends to have a stronger bearing on the partner choice. High exposure to other ethnic groups in one domain is associated with reduced effect of the additional exposure occurring in another domain. The effect of ethnic diversity at workplace tends to be more pronounced among women. The study contributes to the literature by examining both the independent effect of residential and workplace contexts on the formation of ethnically mixed partnership among the native majority population, as well as the interaction between the two.