Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/rsp.v14i3.714
Parental Leave and Child Allowances: Attitudes, Preferences and Possible Impact
Jože Sambt
; Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana
Nada Stropnik
; Inštitut za ekonomska raziskovanja
Abstract
The paper addresses two family policy measures: parental leave and child benefit. It attempts to find out: 1) how people evaluate the existing measures, 2) which are the preferred alternative forms of these two measures (the length and mode of use of the parental leave, and dependence of child benefit rates on the family income, age of the child and the number of children), 3) how high the improvements of these two measures rate among the desired family policy measures, and 4) what possible impact these improvements may have on deciding to have (more) children. Empirical analysis is based on the International Population Policy Acceptance Survey database that covers 14 European countries. Multivariate analysis is used to explain the individual countries’ results and some of the intercountry variation. It was found out that people tend to estimate a relatively high impact of the introduction of desirable family policy measures on their probable decision to have a(nother) child. The combination of improved parental leave arrangements and a substantial rise in child allowance proved to have a lower fertility impact than other combinations of family policy measures considered in the survey.
Keywords
parental leave; child allowance; preferences; fertility impact
Hrčak ID:
30326
URI
Publication date:
28.11.2007.
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