Objective: The objective of the study was to estimate the proportion of planned home births in Sweden and to identify maternal characteristics of women giving birth at home.
Study design: This case-control study included register data of births from 1992 to 2001 in 352 women giving birth at home and 1760 women giving birth in a hospital.
Results: Four hundred thirty-nine out-of-hospital births were found during the study period, and the proportion of planned home births was less than 0.5/1000. Women with home birth were more likely to have 4 children or more (odds ratio 3.7 [1.4 to 9.9]), be born in a European country outside Sweden (odds ratio 3.5 [1.8 to 6.8]), have a family income below the median (odds ratio 2.9 [2.0 to 4.1]), not work outside the home (odds ratio 2.4 [1.7 to 3.5]), have a high level of education (odds ratio 2.1 [1.5 to 3.0]), and be older than 35 years (odds ratio 1.7 [1.1 to 2.5]).
Conclusion: Women with planned home births appear to be a group having a different lifestyle, compared with Swedish women in general.