Earmarked Paternity Leave and Well-Being

Pontus Korsgren () and Max van Lent ()
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Pontus Korsgren: Leiden University
Max van Lent: Leiden University

No 15022, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Earmarked paternity leave has been introduced in an attempt to increase fathers’ involvement in child rearing and to achieve gender equality in the labor market and at home. So far well-being effects of such policies are unexplored. This paper takes a first step in that direction by studying the impact of earmarked paternity leave quota on life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and work-life balance using several policy changes in Europe over the period 1993-2007. We find that earmarked paternity leave increases life satisfaction by 0.18 on a 10 point scale which is equivalent to a 10.8 percentage point increase even decades later. Both fathers and mothers benefit, though the increase in life satisfaction for mothers is nearly 30% higher than that of fathers. Perhaps surprisingly, the impact on job satisfaction and work-life balance is close to zero. Hence even when the impact of paternity leave quota on the labor market are small, the increases in life satisfaction may still justify the existence of such policies.

Keywords: family leave policies; paternity leave; quota; well-being; life satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 I38 J12 J13 J16 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-lab
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