Monograph

Leder delad föräldraledighet till fler barn? En studie om hur pappors och mammors föräldrapenninguttag påverkar benägenheten att skaffa ytterligare barn

Duvander, A.-Z., Andersson, G.
Gender equality and fertility in Sweden: an investigation of the impact of the father’s and the mother´s use of parental leave on continued childbearing
RFV analyserar 2004:15
43 pages. Stockholm, Riksförsäkringsverket (RFV) (2004)

Abstract

In Sweden, a birth of a child induces the right to more than one year of paid parental leave that can be shared between the parents. This paper examines the relationship between the father’s and the mother’s use of parental leave and the continued childbearing of a couple. Our investigation is based on longitudinal information on registered parental-leave use and childbearing of all intact unions in Sweden during the late 1980s to the late 1990s. We analyze our data by means of event-history analysis. We expect an increased paternal involvement in childrearing to be positively associated with a couple’s propensity to have another child since it makes family building more compatible with the mother’s labor-force participation. About 85 percent of all fathers use some leave but in most cases, episodes are very brief. We find a positive effect of a father’s moderate leave use on both second and third births. We also find a positive effect of a mother’s extended leave on third births, indicating that she in such a situation had remained out of labor-market work in anticipation of a next child.
Keywords: Sweden, fertility
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