Take it or leave it? Factors for fathers’ parental leave take-up in Germany

Corinna Frodermann, IAB - Institute for Employment Research
Andreas Filser , IAB - Institute for Employment Research
Ann-Christin Bächmann, IAB - Institute for Employment Research

In 2007, Germany introduced incentives for fathers to increasing fathers’ involvement in childcare and reduce parenthood-related gender inequalities. Yet, more than half of all fathers do not claim any parental allowance and if they do, three quarters only take the minimum of two months. Previous research on this hesitancy in fathers’ parental leave take-up has been limited in scope, lacking longitudinal pre-birth information, or neglecting partner characteristics, including whether paternal leave was concurrent with the partner’s leave. Our study circumvents these limitations by utilizing the Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB) which contain the complete employment biography for both partners of 114,392 married heterosexual couples who were employed subject to social security and became parents in 2007–2013. This data allows for exploring individual-, couple-, and context-level factors for paternal leave take-up, its duration, and the share of solo leave time taken while the partner was actively employed. Preliminary results suggest that fathers are more likely to take parental leave if their spouse has a tertiary degree, yet educational differences are largely insignificant for the overall duration and the solo leave time. With respect to income, fathers’ parental leave take-up, duration, and solo leave time diverge by the share of income earned by the wife in high-income household, while no differences between income constellations emerge for low household incomes. On the context level, East German fathers are more likely to take parental leave and take more solo leave time than West German fathers, but overall leave duration is similar between both regions.

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 Presented in Session 108. Fatherhood and Parental Leave