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Design Matters Most: Changing Social Gaps in the Use of Fathers’ Leave in Spain

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Abstract

This article addresses how the use of the Spanish paternity leave from 2008 until 2018 was conditioned by the social and economic context. In particular, we focus on how economic and institutional changes may have contributed to an increase in fathers’ uptake rates and to an alteration in social patterns of uptake. In 2007, Spain introduced a 2-week non-transferable paternity leave with 100% wage replacement. Despite the Great Recession, this leave has been widely used, although differently according to fathers’ socio-economic background. The objective is to analyse how the economic recovery and the subsequent extension of paternity leave to 4/5 weeks have impacted on the social gaps in uptake. Using a representative sample of 10,171 employed fathers with children 3 months or younger, obtained from a pool of 44 quarters of the Spanish Labour Force Survey, logistic regression models are estimated to analyse by fathers’ socio-economic backgrounds the impact of three historical moments on the likelihood of leave being used. Results show that the economic recovery did not change social gaps in leave uptake, but extension of leave has been the decisive event. It has narrowed or reversed the gaps in terms of social class, type of worker, type of contract and education. We conclude that the Spanish ‘daddy month’ has become a social norm for 80% of employed fathers, because of its design. Social gaps in uptake have changed because the new legislation has legitimised men using leave, and not because of lower opportunity costs during economic recovery.

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Fig. 1

Source own elaboration with data from the Labor Force Survey for employed fathers and the official social security statistics for the use of leave allowances

Fig. 2

Source own calculations from SLFS (2008–2018)

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Notes

  1. Finland, Denmark and Germany also have similar designs, but lower replacement rates and/or comparatively low ceilings for high-earning fathers.

  2. Employers have to pay social security contributions of the employee on leave, but if they do not substitute the father on leave they save up his wage.

  3. To our knowledge no analysis has been undertaken to explain why there are now more paternity than maternity leave beneficiaries. Since entitlement is based on contributions to social security, this gap may be explained by the higher incidence of precarious and informal jobs among women, which makes men more likely to be employed in eligible jobs than women.

  4. Some mothers are entitled to more than 16 weeks of leave and some fathers to more than 2/4/5 weeks. First, mothers and fathers receive 1 week more for each child from the second child onwards in the cases of a multiple birth, and if their child is disabled. Second, if the baby has to stay in hospital after birth, the allowances are expanded as long as hospitalisation lasts, up to a maximum of 13 additional weeks.

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Funding

Financial support by National Research Projects CSO2014-58754-P and CSO2014-59927-R.

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  1. Departamento de Sociología II (Estructura Social), Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Madrid), Calle del Obispo Trejo 2, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Teresa Jurado-Guerrero & Jacobo Muñoz-Comet

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  1. Teresa Jurado-Guerrero
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  2. Jacobo Muñoz-Comet
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Correspondence to Jacobo Muñoz-Comet.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 5 .

Table 5 Socio-demographic characteristics of the sample (percentages)
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Jurado-Guerrero, T., Muñoz-Comet, J. Design Matters Most: Changing Social Gaps in the Use of Fathers’ Leave in Spain. Popul Res Policy Rev 40, 589–615 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-020-09592-w

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