The Parental Leave Benefit: A Key Family Policy Measure, One Decade Later

Mathias Huebener, Kai-Uwe Müller, Katharina Spiess () and Katharina Wrohlich

DIW Economic Bulletin, 2016, vol. 6, issue 49, 571-578

Abstract: On January 1, 2017, the parental leave benefit will be celebrating its tenth anniversary. Although its implementation was fervidly debated, it has become a widely accepted family policy measure. Its impact on parental labor supply, the division oflabor between parents, fertility, and indicators that reflect the well-being of parents and children have been examined from a variety of perspectives. A global evaluation of relevant economic studies shows that on average, when young familiesreceive the parental leave benefit as an earnings replacement benefit, their economic stability in the first year after childbirth increases. As a result of the parental leave benefit, the employment rate of mothers decreased in the first year after childbirth, while it increased in the second year. The share of fathers who take parental leave has clearly increased, while the effects on the division of labor within the family are inconclusive. Some evidence suggests that the parental leave benefit can even have an effect on fertility. Little is known about its impact on child development. Overall, although the parental leave benefit family policy measure has been successful in many areas, its targeted effects could be augmented by additional family policy reforms.

Keywords: parental leave; parental leave benefit; family polic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J13 J16 J18 J21 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... n_bull_2016-49-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2016-49-1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in DIW Economic Bulletin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().