Father-Specific Leave, Gendered Care and Family Dynamics in a Conservative Welfare Regime: Evidence from Austria

Adèle Lemoine , Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Institute of Demography
Sonja Spitzer

Fathers’ participation in childcare is central to the division of paid and unpaid work within couples and may also shape family dynamics, including fertility and union stability. We study a major parenting leave reform in Austria that encouraged fathers’ participation in childcare by introducing co-parent leave benefits, several measures to promote parental leave sharing and greater flexibility in parental leave use. Austria is a critical case because it combines generous parental leave with long maternal employment interruptions and a conservative division of childcare. Using population-wide register data and a regression discontinuity design based on the birth-date eligibility cutoff, we first examine whether the reform changed fathers’ leave-taking and division of childcare. We then assess effects on subsequent fertility, birth spacing and union dissolution. The reform increased fathers’ co-parent leave take-up by 4.5 percentage points, but did not increase fathers’ parental leave take-up or duration, equal leave sharing, or mothers’ return to employment. Consistent with this limited behavioral response, we find no effects on subsequent family dynamics. Take-up was concentrated among more advantaged fathers; a dominance analysis shows that education, nativity, birth order and employment status were the strongest predictors, pointing to persistent institutional, socioeconomic and normative barriers to fathers’ leave-taking.

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 Presented in Session 41. Fertility, Family Policies and Labour Markets