Does the Municipal Supplement for Child Home Care Allowance Weaken Mothers’ Labour Market Attachment?
Abstract
The child home care allowance is a very popular benefit that is used by the great majority of families in Finland for at least some time after parental leave. Even though the benefit is gender neutral, men rarely take advantage and use it to look after their child(ren) at home. In addition to the statutory home care allowance, some municipalities pay a supplement to families who do not use municipal day care services. The supplement amount and terms and conditions of its use vary between municipalities. This study analyses whether availability of the municipal supplement
for child home care allowance is related to mother’s weaker labour market attachment in the long term.
The study is based on register data originally collected for the longitudinal Finnish Public Sector Study. The study population consists of mothers who,
according to the Hospital Discharge Register, gave their first birth in 2000–2002. Data on these mothers’ employment contracts from the first birth until 2010 were retrieved from the National Pension Register. Information on the availability of the municipal supplement in each mother’s home municipality one year after the first birth was used as the independent variable. Mothers’ labour market attachment was first categorized into different trajectories, with latent class growth analysis conducted separately for women with (n=1966) and without an employment contract (n=1486) at the time of their first birth.
Among women without a job contract at the time of first birth, the availability of the municipal supplement was related to weak labour market attachment. The association remained statistically significant when age, socioeconomic status and number of children born during the follow-up were taken into account. Availability of the supplement was not related to weak labour market attachment among women with a job contract at the time of their first birth.
The municipal supplements seem to work as intended: they keep women out of the labour force for a longer period of time, thus relieving the demand for public child care. On the other hand, municipal supplements, for their part, reinforce the present situation where most of the family leaves and benefits are used by women, who suffer from a weaker position in the labour market. At the individual level, the effects of weaker labour market attachment are even reflected in a lower level of pensions.
Authors
Laura Peutere, Anita Haataja, Jussi Vahtera, Mika Kivimäki, Jaana Pentti, Pekka Virtanen
Additional Information
- Peer-Reviewed: yes.
- Open Access: yes.
- Cite as: Peutere, L., Haataja, A., Vahtera, J., Kivimäki, M., Pentti, J., & Virtanen, P. (2014). Heikentääkö kotihoidon tuen kuntalisä äitien kiinnittymistä työelämään? Yhteiskuntapolitiikka, 79(3), 291–305. https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2014061829343
