Impacts of a paternity leave reform: Exploring seasonality and heterogeneity in fathers' take-up of parental leave

Abstact

Why do family policies not appear to result in greater gender equality in the labour market? We consider a Finnish paternity leave reform that made the use of paternity leave more flexible but did not increase the number of earmarked days. Using this reform as a natural experiment, we explore its effects on fathers’ leave take-up and labour market outcomes for parents. We also study couples’ heterogeneity and whether certain types of couples are more responsive to the reform. We find that fathers whose children were born just after the reform are more likely to take longer paternity leave compared to fathers whose children were born just before the re-form. Furthermore, this responsiveness is milder in couples with a large potential gender wage gap. However, no effect is observed in the outcomes measuring gender inequality in the labour market. We show that fathers prefer to utilise their parental leaves during holiday periods, such as the summer months and the end of the year. This behaviour might explain the zero effects of paternity leave reforms on the labour market.

Full text (helda.helsinki.fi).

Authors

Lauro Carnicelli, Anneli Miettinen, Terhi Ravaska, Tapio Räsänen, Miia Saarikallio-Torp

Additional Information

• Peer-reviewed: no.
• Open Access: yes.
• Cite as: Carnicelli, L., Miettinen, A., Ravaska, T., Räsänen, A., & Saarikallio-Torp, M. (2024). Impacts of a paternity leave reform: Exploring seasonality and heterogenity in fathers' take-up of parental leave. Kela. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-284-196-4