Parental leave and child benefit: attitudes, preferences and possible impact

Nada Stropnik, Institute for Economic Research
Joze Sambt, University of Ljubljana

The paper addresses two family policy measures: parental leave and child allowance. The aim of the paper is to find out: 1) Which are the preferred alternative forms of these two measures; 2) How much in favour of improved parental leave arrangements for working women and a substantially higher child allowance the respondents are, and what are the differences among European countries; 3) What possible impact the improvements in these two measures may have on deciding to have (more) children. Empirical analysis is based on the International Population Policy Acceptance Study database which covers 14 European countries. Logistic regression is used to identify those characteristics of the respondents, which determine their lower or higher propensity for probably deciding to have a(nother) child if the desirable family policy measures were introduced, as compared to the characteristics of the reference group.