Does Mothers’ Parental Leave Uptake Stimulate Continued Employment and Family Formation? Evidence for Belgium

Wood Wood,Neels Neels

doi:10.3390/socsci8100292

Abstract

Parental leave schemes undoubtedly facilitate the combination of work and family life during leave-taking. In addition to this instantaneous effect of parental leave uptake, a growing yet limited body of research addresses the question of subsequent effects of parental leave uptake. As work-family policies, such as parental leave, are geared towards stimulating family formation and (female) employment, this study assessed whether the individual uptake of parental leave by employed mothers after the birth of a child yielded differential parity progression and employment patterns compared to eligible employed mothers that did not take leave. Using data from the Belgian Administrative Socio-Demographic panel, we applied dynamic propensity score matching and hazard models. Our results indicate that previous leave uptake is a differentiating factor in subsequent fertility and employment outcomes, but also that (self-)selection strongly affects this relation. Descriptive analyses indicate that mothers who use leave shortly after childbearing exhibit a similar progression to second births, more third births and less fourth births, while displaying substantially lower hazards of exiting the labour force regardless of parity. However, when controlling for the fact that mothers who use parental leave exhibit a stronger pre-birth attachment to the labour force, work for larger employers in specific employment sectors, and also differ from non-users in terms of household characteristics (e.g., higher household income, more likely to be married and less likely to have a non-Belgian background), many associations between leave uptake and subsequent fertility and employment outcomes turn neutral or even negative. No indication for higher parity progression among leave users was found and the hazard of exiting the labour force was moderately higher for leave users. These empirical results are discussed in the Belgian context of low parental leave benefits, short leave entitlements and low uptake of parental leave, features which are also displayed by other Western European countries and contrast with the Nordic European countries studied in previous research.

Highlights

In the context of rising female labour force participation and declining fertility levels in many developed countries since the second half of the 20th century, so-called work-family reconciliation policies, such as formal childcare or parental leave, have been introduced and extended
We adopted a dynamic matching approach for leave taking during the first four quarters after every childbirth (Sianesi 2004)5 in which mothers who started using parental leave were matched with similar mothers that did not use parental leave
In line with previous applications of the effects of parental leave uptake, we argue that, it is questionable that this assumption will hold at all times, the use of rich large-scale register data with detailed variables does strengthen the assumption (Aassve and Lappegård 2009; Sianesi 2004)

Summary

Introduction

In the context of rising female labour force participation and declining fertility levels in many developed countries since the second half of the 20th century, so-called work-family reconciliation policies, such as formal childcare or parental leave, have been introduced and extended. The assessment of the effectiveness of work-family reconciliation policies in terms of female employment and fertility has been high on the social demographic research agenda for decades. The ever-growing available body of research remains inconclusive, with varying effects of formal childcare and parental. A growing yet limited body of research assesses the effect of individual-level uptake of parental leave on subsequent parity progression and maternal employment (Aassve and Lappegård 2010; Aassve and Lappegård 2009; Duvander and Andersson 2006; Duvander et al 2010; Fitzenberger et al 2010)

Methods

Results

Conclusion