Who is affected by parental leave reforms? Women’s selection into different parental leave lengths across recent policy reforms in Germany

Lara Bister, Peter Eibich and Roberta Rutigliano
Additional contact information
Lara Bister: University of Groningen [Groningen], Helsingin yliopisto = Helsingfors universitet = University of Helsinki, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics, IMQ and IGIER - Università Bocconi
Peter Eibich: Legos - Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion des Organisations de Santé - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Roberta Rutigliano: UPV / EHU - Universidad del País Vasco [Espainia] / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea [España] = University of the Basque Country [Spain] = Université du pays basque [Espagne], OPIK - Research Group on Social Determinants of Health and Demographic Change - UPV / EHU - Universidad del País Vasco [Espainia] / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea [España] = University of the Basque Country [Spain] = Université du pays basque [Espagne]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Public parental leave schemes aim to facilitate women's reconciliation of family and employment after their transition into motherhood. While parental leave policies underwent several reforms over the past decades, adapting to changing female labour market participation and family cultures, the available entitlements are not tailored to women's individual circumstances and needs. It remains unclear how these affect the women's parental leave uptake, particularly the leave length. In this paper, we followed an exploratory and descriptive approach to study the selection of women into different parental leave lengths with changing public parental leave entitlements in Germany and according to their individual characteristics. We use data from the German Statutory Pension Fund on 29,001 women born between 1955 and 1984 who had their first child between 1991 and 2016 at the ages 20–39. We estimate linear regression and discrete-time proportional hazard models to examine associations between women's characteristics and their length of leave. We identify the effects of two major parental leave reforms in Germany in 1992 and 2007 in a Regression Discontinuity Design. Our results show that the general extension of available parental leave entitlements in 1992 increased the likelihood of women's parental leave uptake between 25 and 36 months. For women who became mothers at an older age, had a high income before transitioning into motherhood, or with higher education; however, the likelihood of parental leave uptake of 2 months increased. The reform of 2007 led to an increased likelihood of leave uptake longer than 2 months for these women. These findings suggest that women with a higher labour market attachment have responded more strongly to the changes in parental leave benefits in Germany.

Keywords: Parental leave lengths; Germany; Motherhood; Fathers; Family-cultural contexts; Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-10-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04911932v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Genus: Journal of Population Sciences, 2024, 80 (15), ⟨10.1186/s41118-024-00221-4⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04911932v1/document (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:hal:journl:hal-04911932

DOI: 10.1186/s41118-024-00221-4

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().