The Government *Can* Make a Difference
Posted on 24. Jan, 2008 by rebel in General
This showed up in the comments last month, but the findings here are interesting enough that I should reiterate ‘em: according to Reuters, 10 percent of the people taking advantage of the German subsidy for staying home with a newborn are men. That’s up from 3.5 percent before the subsidy kicked in. And 20 percent of the guys are maxing out their time at home (12 months).
I can’t put my fingers on the data, but it seems like other programs encouraging dads to stay home have had a rougher go of it (in Sweden, I believe, they had to launch a PR campaign to really get dads to take advantage of the great program there), so I’m encouraged by the strong start to the German program.
My only complaint: Reuters has this filed in the “Oddly Enough,” category.
Working Dad
24. Jan, 2008
Interesting stuff, and it comes around the same time as Washington State’s new paid family leave benefit, though that hasn’t started yet. It’s odd that a European-based wire like Reuters woud put that in the Odd News category, though I would expect Bloomberg News to bury it there.
tony
24. Jan, 2008
I think the 3.5% number is the most interesting one - much more than I would’ve expected! I wonder what the U.S. number is…