This article applies a couple perspective to assessing gender inequality in Sweden—a setting with high maternal labour force participation, a long history of family policy investment, and strong norms of gender equality. We address open questions about how couples’ earnings following parenthood have changed over time, and how patterns of inequality in couples’ earnings have played out across educational groups. Our study uses fixed effects methods and register data covering the total population of heterosexual couples giving birth in Sweden between 1987 and 2007 (N = 587,414 couples). It examines change in the female partner’s share of total couple earnings from 2 years before to 8 years after first birth across parent cohorts differentiated by his and her education. Women’s earnings share declines steeply following birth, across all groups. Results show modestly smaller declines among parents in the latest cohort in the year directly following childbirth. Change is most pronounced among couples with a highly educated female partner, and it appears driven by a marked dip in fathers’ earnings that is new to this recent generation of men. Recent movement towards within-couple equality in Sweden appears driven by men’s work adjustments, pointing to an important shift in the allocation of care work within couples.

This study examines how separation affects the earnings of fathers and mothers in Sweden. Based on large-scale register data, this study tracks the earnings of women and men who had a first child between 2002 and 2004, and who were living with a partner at the first birth. The study compares mothers and fathers who separated before the first child reached age eight with mothers and fathers who stayed partnered. In particular, the question of how parents’ earning trajectories differed by pre-birth earnings quartiles is explored. It is assumed that separated mothers had more positive earnings trajectories than mothers who stayed partnered, given that separation leads to an increase in the labour supply and a reduction in the depreciation of human capital endowment among women. The results of this study show that the earnings of separated mothers are indeed higher in the period of time immediately after the separation. However, 8 years after the first birth, the earnings of partnered mothers are higher than those of separated mothers. Differences between separated and non-separated fathers are considerably smaller than among women. The findings also indicate that pre-birth labour earnings are a strong predictor of the earnings trajectories of both separated and non-separated mothers.

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