Measuring policy entitlements at the micro-level: maternity and parental leave in Europe

ABSTRACT

Comparative social policy analysis has been shaped by the measurement of policy as a macro phenomenon. However, social policy theories have consistently asserted that policy entitlements vary across class, gender, ethnicity and the life-course. This paper synthesises a number of innovations to produce an approach which allows researchers to explore the policy heterogeneity within populations, across populations and over time. Using the example of maternity and parental leave, policy entitlements are identified through the calculation of financial support an individual would receive if they were to have a child, using a combination of legislative rules with representative survey sample. The results reveal far greater heterogeneity in policy entitlements than existing indicators suggest, with considerable implications for research on maternity and parental leave. This approach is not limited to maternity and parental leave benefits and demonstrates a way to explore comparative social policy in greater depth and detail.

RESUMEN

L’analyse comparative des politiques sociales a été fondée sur la base de la mesure des politiques en tant que phénomène macro. Cependant les theories des politiques sociales ont de facon uniforme affirmé que les critères d’éligibilités aux politiques varient entre classe sociale, genre, ethnicité, et parcours de vie. Ce papier fait la synthèse d’un certain numbers d’innovations de facon à produire une approche qui permet aux chercheur d’explorer l’hétégogénéité au sein des politiques entre populations et au cours du temps. En utilisant l’exemple des congés de maternité et parentaux, les critères d’éligibilité sont identifiés à l’aide du calcul du support financier un individu aurait recu s’il avait eu un enfant sur la base d’une combinaison de règles législatives et d’un échantillon représentatif de la population. Les résultats révèlent beaucoup plus d’hétérogénéité en termes d’éligibilité en comparaison avec les indicateurs courants, avec des conséquences considérables pour les recherches sur les congés de maternité et parentaux. Cette approche n’est pas limitée au cas des prestations de congé de maternité et parentaux et suggère une facon d’explorer plus en profondeur l’analyse comparative des politiques sociales.

KEYWORDS:

• Maternity leave
• parental leave
• policy entitlements
• eligibility
• measuring policy
• EU-SILC

MOTSCLÉS:

• congé de maternité
• congé parentaux
• critères d’éligibilité
• droit au congé parentaux
• mesure de la politique sociale
• EU-SILC

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Lyle Scruggs, Dr. Kati Kuitto and participants in the 12th Annual ESPAnet Conference 2014 for their comments and feedback. We would also like to thank Prof. Anne H. Gauthier and Dr. Nicole Hiekel for valuable comments on earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alžběta Bártová is a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

Tom Emery is a project manager of the Generations and Gender Programme, and post-doctoral researcher at NIDI and Erasmus University Rotterdam. He received his PhD in Social Policy from the University of Edinburgh in 2014.

Notes

1. For details see: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/euromod

2. For details see: http://cwed2.org/

3. For details see: http://www.sofi.su.se/spin/the-social-policy-indicator-database-spin-1.237473

4. For details see: http://www.oecd.org/els/family/database.htm

5. We exclude single women, not because they do not have children but because the circumstances associated with single motherhood and the subsequent policy framework differ considerably to those associated with motherhood within a relationship and so including them may not be appropriate for the evaluation of the policy. Our approach and policy coding can be used to analyse single mothers.

6. In case the legislation specified different rules for individuals working in the public and private sector, we treated all individuals in our sample as working in the private sector.

7. The employment history in EU-SILC covers only 12 months, which represents certain limitation in countries which that several months of employment over period of time that is longer than one year. This is, for instance, the case of Spain.

8. Unfortunately, the OECD Family Database provides only most recent indicators and does not keep the data from previous years. Therefore, we can only compare the OECD most recent replacement rates (2014) with our most recent compensation rates (2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Economic and Social Research Council doctoral scholarship awarded to Alžběta Bártová [grant number 1090656].