Paid Parental Leave
Reader T.H. said this chart of paid parental leave in different countries is inaccurate, and sends this more up-to-date chart, based on Sakiko Tanaka’s 2005 article “Parental leave and child health across OECD countries” ([p F7-F28] Economic Journal Volume 115 Issue 501):
The baseline point, however, remains the same. It’s standard for countries to offer a certain amount of mandatory paid parental leave as a recognition of the special role parents play in our society (in effect, this measure lowers everyone’s wages slightly and then provides a benefit only to parents, thus enacting a small transfer of resources from non-parents to parents). In the United States, everything must surrender beneath the all-powerful God of flexible labor markets, and “pro-family” conservatives seem fine with that.
36 Responses to “Paid Parental Leave”
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June 8th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
We already have a lot of transfers from non-parents to parents…
June 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
At what point do depopulating European countries–like Italy–start recruiting American college graduates to come and live and work and raise a family?
June 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
You run a small 40 person marketing firm in Berlin and you have two newly married, equally qualified. candidates for a job – one is male the other is female – who are you going to hire?
June 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
We have significantly more transfers from parents to non-parents. These take the form of parents raising their children. These expenses are mandated by law, and almost every non-parent has benefited from them.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
“depopulating European countries”
One wonders why they are depopulating what with all these family friendly benefits.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Actually, European levels of birth rates have started to improve, holding steady as opposed to declining. Don’t recall exactly where I read it, but it was a study released within the last year.
BTW, love that we can finally preview comments.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
It would be interesting to see, though, the actual amount of time spent on paid parental leave per country per worker, or whatever. Plenty of firms in the US give paid parental leave despite their legal entitlement not to do so.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
You run a small 40 person marketing firm in Berlin and you have two newly married, equally qualified. candidates for a job – one is male the other is female – who are you going to hire?
If the answer you were going for is that you hire the male because the female might get pregnant in the future and you might have to give her 14 weeks of leave instead of the fewer weeks the dad gets (dads do get leave as well in Europe), then you’re not only a misogynist bastard who’s probably terrible to work for but also discriminating and subject to lawsuits. I really hope you didn’t think that was a convincing argument against mandated leave.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
also discriminating and subject to lawsuits.
You really don’t know anything about the German legal system or how discrimination laws are enforced in practice, do you?
“But in Germany, companies on the losing end of discrimination cases have typically been given little more than a slap on the wrist. Fines are often low enough that they hardly make a dent in the petty cash drawer.”
June 8th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
A lot of those other countries are concerned about their populations declining, so it makes sense that they want to encourage people to have children. The U.S. doesn’t have the same problem, so while I certainly think it would be nice for the government to give parents a little more help, there’s less of a clear need to incentivize people to have children.
I recognize that this issue is much more complex than simply being about economic incentives, but it’s worth thinking about as a partial explanation for why the U.S. lags in this area. A lot of European countries really do need more kids, so the parents are doing their country a favor by having and raising a child.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
You really don’t know anything about the German legal system or how discrimination laws are enforced in practice, do you?
Um, no, the German legal system is not an area I’m intimately familiar with. You picked a country at random to use your example that this policy is…bad for women? Leads to high unemployment among potentially childbearing women? What exactly is your point? Obviously any policy can be exploited by particularly assholish profit-over-everything company owners. The answer is obviously to fix German antidiscrimination enforcement, not to say that we shouldn’t implement paid leave here. You’re being massively disingenuous.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Yeah, because the kind of employers who would discriminate against women on the grounds of 14 weeks of leave if they got pregnant wouldn’t discriminate against them on the grounds that they could someday get pregnant and be out of the office for that whole “childbirth, delivery, and having to feed a person every 2 hours” period of time that usually lasts about 14 weeks.
It’s like how minimum wage penalizes people by making it harder for people who demand to be paid fairly to get hired. And anti-discrimination laws make it harder for black people to get hired because companies are afraid they’ll face a discrimination suit if the employee doesn’t work out.
Remember, laws that keep employers from discriminating against us on completely ridiculous and unfair grounds always hurt us. And it’s not the fault of the employer for discriminating. Nope, it’s the bad bad law that made them do it.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Adam,
Of the two countries I’m most familiar with, Germany and Italy – they offer generous maternity leave benefits but have very weak anti-discrimination policies. The net result is a high degree of discrimination against women of child bearing age.
In Italy the female labor force participation rate is 42.8% in the US it’s 71%. I would tend to think that 64 weeks of paid leave might have something to do with it.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
It’s not just about government creating incentives for people to have children. It’s also about labor unions fighting for benefits.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
As a current federal employee, I have to admit that I find this bill slightly absurd. As it is, federal employees receive rather generous leave benefits. When starting out in federal service, employees accrue 4 hours of annual leave and 4 hours of sick leave every two weeks. This breaks down to 26 paid days off per year plus 10 federal holidays. After three years of service, this increases to 33 paid days off per year plus holidays. Any employee anticipating the birth of a child would certainly have at a minimum 9 months within which they could accrue more than enough leave hours. Now, a case could (and has been) made for mandatory sick days for private sector employees as well as increased vacation time. However, in the public sector our benefits are generous enough.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
jmo played a nice trick in comment #3 to show everyone how smart he his with his knowledge and his words. Bravo. Tool.
Also, he says, “I would tend to think that 64 weeks of paid leave might have something to do with it.”
If one were so familiar with Italy, as he says, he would know that it’s much easier for families to get by with a single wage earner than it is here. Men have this thing about being the bread winners, thus you get 42% female labor force participation.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Histograms are a very simple but much more sophisticated and interesting way to display information. I encourage you and your policy/social science friends to use them! I think they would make your point better.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
“If one were so familiar with Italy, as he says, he would know that it’s much easier for families to get by with a single wage earner than it is here. Men have this thing about being the bread winners, thus you get 42% female labor force participation.”
If you knew anyting about Italy you’d know that it has a high cost of living and low wages compared to the rest of Europe. This is a huge political issue in Italy. Indeed, the inability of young people to afford to move out of their parent’s homes is a huge problem and contributes to the low birth rate. So, not only can’t you afford to raise a family on one income in Italy, most aren’t even able to afford their own apartment until they are well past 30.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I’m the father of a newborn. My wife gets 0 weeks of paid maternity leave (her employer, a major university, offers faculty 3 months of m|paternity leave, but nothing to staff). I get 0 weeks of paid paternity leave.
Bring on the living hell of a socialist state, please.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
So why not just have a child tax credit? Why is it better to not only reward people for having kids, but for taking time off to be with them? If parents don’t want to take a pay cut to have more parental leave why should government policy encourage them to? Specifically why should government favor arrangements in which both parents work over ones in which one parent works and gets paid more while the other stays home with the kid?
June 8th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
4 hours of annual leave and 4 hours of sick leave every two weeks. adds up to 13 paid vacation days and 13 sick days. I do not find this to be “rather generous.” This is the policy at my workplace and I am working sick today because my sick days are running very low. I have a toddler, and I have to take off when he is sick because day care won’t take him. So when I am sick I am SOL.
In the United States, everything must surrender beneath the all-powerful God of flexible labor markets, and “pro-family” conservatives seem fine with that. Everything except for insurance companies, who apparently know who to pay off. Our labor markets would be much more flexible with universal health care.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
If paid time off is so valuable to society, why should private employers be paying for it? The money should come out of tax revenue instead of being a surprize financial disaster for small businesses that make the mistake of hiring fertile and maternal type employees.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Why is it better to not only reward people for having kids, but for taking time off to be with them? Because spending time getting acquainted after childbirth leads to better outcomes for parents and children, significatnly enough that these activities should be subsidized. Because new mothers, especially first time mothers, are often not ready to return to work and do a good job freakin’ 48 hours after giving birth. And because when you allow systematic barriers to the full participation of whole groups in the labor market, you get less than full participation, and a poorer society as a whole. Women who can’t take leave and return to their jobs often end up just quitting, staying out of the work force longer, and being less productive and earning less over the course of their careers. This loss of productivity affects the family involved most directly, but also results in lower GDP and less tax revenue.
The money should come out of tax revenue instead of being a surprize financial disaster for small businesses that make the mistake of hiring fertile and maternal type employees.
Presumably this could be handled as a form of insurance, similar to how unemployment benefits are handled. Couldn’t it?
June 8th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
“you’re not only a misogynist bastard who’s probably terrible to work for but also discriminating and subject to lawsuits.”
Well screeched, I suppose. But it sidesteps the question.
I worked for a very small publishing company a while back. Maybe 25 people. While I was there, three of the top female execs got pregnant and took their (unpaid) six months of leave. Fair enough. But it nearly destroyed the company, and it definitely set back a number of very ambitious (and very expensive) projects.
That’s not to say that these women did the wrong thing. And the company did survive. But I hardly think it amounts to a real and visceral hatred of women to be concerned about these things when hiring. After all, I do think it makes sense for a restaurant to hire college people to staff up over the summer. But is it age or career discrimination to maybe not hire ALL college students? Because, you know, in the fall, they would all leave? And you wouldn’t have any staff?
And obviously, the smaller the operation, the bigger the impact, In the case of the publishing company, more than 10 percent of the workforce (and about half the executive workforce) left at the exact same moment. Each had to be replaced by experienced, competent people who would agree to come on board for six months, then leave. To get those kind of people, you have to pay a TON. And no matter who they are, it takes them a month or two to get up to speed. So generally, it fell to the other staffers to fill in.
Seriously. Do you have to be a caveman to worry about that? Maybe there are some solutions, and obviously, Western Europe has not fallen completely apart. But to call a small business owner a misogynist for mentionings seems incredibly counterproductive to your cause.
It’s a legitimate concern.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
How about this for a plan:
If the average person works for – let’s say – 50 years then a tax increase of 1% would be enough to fund a 6 month sabbatical for everyone. If you’re the typical family with two children, the mother might take the first 3 months to be and the father may take the second 3 months when each child is born. If you’re gay, single, infertile, etc. you get a 6 month sabbatical at the time of your choosing to do whatever you like.
It think that makes more sense than saying that some poor company has to pay for Mrs. Dugger to stay home for a year with each of her 18 children.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
P.S. It would also solve the discrimination issue as you would never know when an employee would decide to take his/her leave.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Re: Sam M
You’re looking at it from the company’s point of view, and, fair enough. It is a difficult problem for a company. But as a woman who’s considering having children in the next couple of years, it also feels like a Catch-22 from my perspective. Like many couples, my husband and I both work. Especially once we have children, we’ll need both of our salaries to live on. Yet, I will require a certain amount of time off after having a child – and there’s nothing to guarantee that my company keep paying me or even keep employing me. My husband and I have been prudent; we can afford me taking a certain amount of unpaid leave as long as I have a job to go back to. But ultimately, the only “obvious” solution seems to be to not have children and that’s not sustainable for the society at large. Culturally, we need to re-think how to support families with children, whether through parental-leave laws or extra financial support or publicly-financed day care. I don’t know what the best solution is, but as it is now, our laws are still catering to a stay-at-home parent societal structure that no longer exists for the majority of us.
And for those of you who are childless and think that people with families are somehow getting “unfair” breaks, I dare you to spend a few days babysitting toddlers.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Five years ago I had a baby while living in the U.S. I worked for a private company that gave me 8 weeks of full salary through short-term disability benefits, took another 3 weeks as paid vacation, and 1 week unpaid, for a total of 12 weeks leave. So I think there’s a lot of variation in what people get.
Last year I had a baby in Canada. My private employer did not pay a dime of my salary while I took 32 weeks off, since maternity/parental leave pay is managed through unemployment insurance. Some employers here top up government benefits so you get 90-100% of your regular salary while on leave, but it is not required.
The leave in Canada was amazing. I may have been in my seat at work in the US after 12 weeks, but I wasn’t much good to them. I was a zombie due to sleep deprivation. And my baby was sick all the time from being in group daycare, so I missed a lot of days. In Canada, I got to spend 8 months at home bonding with my new baby, keeping her healthy, and just generally being a mom. And when I returned to work, it was like I never left.
Managing maternity leaves is just part of the business culture up here. Women in senior positions tend to take shorter leaves. When an employee will be gone as long as a year, it’s worthwhile to hire someone on contract. Employers get to bring in new talent for a trial run, and people at the start of their careers can get hired more easily.
I think the US could work something out, no?
June 8th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
We can’t have things that are taken for granted in every other civilized country because, because, shut up you stupid liberal fascist that’s why!
June 8th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
As a parent of two, I already subsidize the retirement of childless adults due to the way social security is set up based on generational transfer. While I support Social Security and have no interest in privatizing the system, I sure wish we as a nation recognized how dependent our own future is on the next generation and helped out those who contribute more to that future by raising these future taxpayers.
I am a little late to benefit from parental leave, but any help for college costs would be appreciated.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
So called pro-society progressives seem fine with upwards of 10% unemployment.
June 8th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
[...] course of their careers. This loss of productivity affects the … View original post here: Matthew Yglesias » Paid Parental Leave This entry is filed under Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through [...]
June 9th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Where’s Canada and Australia? I’d be interested to see where they stand, since the only non-European countries listed are the US and Japan. My friend just got pregnant in Australia and she says she gets 12 months of unpaid leave, but with a guarantee that her job is waiting for her.
Oooh, like the preview function!
June 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Really? and what’s it called when my kids are working so that you can have your social security check?
June 10th, 2009 at 3:29 am
“I worked for a very small publishing company a while back. Maybe 25 people. While I was there, three of the top female execs got pregnant and took their (unpaid) six months of leave. Fair enough. But it nearly destroyed the company, and it definitely set back a number of very ambitious (and very expensive) projects.
That’s not to say that these women did the wrong thing. And the company did survive. But I hardly think it amounts to a real and visceral hatred of women to be concerned about these things when hiring.”
We’ll continue to have this kind of blatant discrimination against all women (even those that don’t plan on having children) until it’s equally possible and likely that a man will take parental leave as a woman is to take it. Sweden is on such a path. Couples get to split 18 months of leave any way they see fit. It’s part of the culture in Sweden that men should have just as much responsibility for raising a child as women (they’re not exactly there yet in practice, but they are making significant progress). It’s refreshing, it’s fair, and I think it makes the lives of families here that much better.
Trying to get the birth rate up may be one reason that European family policies are so generous, but it’s certainly not the only concern. Since WWII, most European citizens have come to a consensus that its the state’s responsibility to improve people’s quality of life and to provide a generous safety net. As their country’s get richer, their lives become tangibly better (more vacation time, more leave, shorter work days, free higher education, not to mention health care). In the U.S., our country has become richer and richer, yet it seems that only businesses and the already wealthy in our society benefit. The rest of us work longer and longer hours, pay outrageous amounts for health care (or are tethered to our employers just for the health benefits), pay more and more for higher education, make do with 10 days of vacation, if that, and take almost no parental or sick leave.
You can continue to believe that all of this self-sacrifice is what makes America so prosperous. But what exactly is prosperity if we have a much higher poverty rate in this country than almost any country in Europe? What does prosperity mean to the average worker, if in America you get 10 days off to enjoy that prosperity, but in Europe you get at least 4 weeks? How much better off are we, really, if American men almost never get the opportunity to nurture their own children at the very beginning of their newborn’s lives? I think we can do better.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:47 am
[...] How does the US measure up when it comes to Paid Parental Leave? [...]