Total Adoptions Per Year

Each bar represents the number of children adopted in a given year. Hover over a specific year to see absolute adoption numbers as well as the percentage out of the total number of adoptions.

Total Adoptions by Country Over Time

This visualization illustrates the contribution of different countries to Sweden’s adoption numbers over time. The “Others” category groups countries outside the top 10 to maintain readability. You can click on the country names to the right to display or hide countries in the plot.

• South Korea was the dominant source country for adoptions in the 1980s, but numbers fell significantly afterward.
• China emerged as major adoption source in the 2000s.

Cumulative Adoptions Over Time

This chart represents the cumulative total number of adoptions over time. It provides a clearer picture of the overall impact of transnational adoptions to Sweden.

• The number of children adopted into Sweden rose steadily until the mid-2000s.
• After 2004, the cumulative curve flattens, reflecting the declining rate of adoptions.

Cumulative Adoptions by Country

This chart shows cumulative adoptions broken down by country over time. Hover over a specific year to see the cumulative number of adoptions for each country. For readability, only the top 10 sender countries are marked individually. The remaining countries are grouped in “Other”.

South Korea, Colombia, and India remain the highest contributors to Sweden’s adoption history.

Top 20 Sending Countries

This visualization ranks the top 20 countries that sent children for adoption to Sweden. Hover over a specific country to see the total number of adoptions from each, as well the the percentage of the total number of adoptions.

Colombia leads in total adoptions, followed by South Korea and India.

Adoption Heatmap

This heatmap provides a historical overview of international adoptions to Sweden from the top 20 sending countries over the period 1970–2024. It allows us to see when different countries were major sources of adoptees and how adoption patterns shifted over time. Hover over a tile to see the number of adoptions from a specific country a specific year.

How to Read the Heatmap

• Each row represents a country, while the columns represent years from 1970 to 2024.
• The color intensity represents the number of adoptions, with darker shades indicating fewer adoptions and brighter shades (yellow/green) indicating more adoptions.
• White gaps indicate years where no recorded adoptions occurred from a specific country.

Why Log Scale?

• The color scale uses a logarithmic scale, meaning that differences are more pronounced for smaller values while still capturing trends for countries with high adoption numbers.
• This makes it easier to compare countries that had both low and high adoption rates over time.