population insights parental leave -...
TRANSCRIPT
FAST DATA FOR FAST DEMOGRAPHY
“Demography is destiny” is a well-known
expression. It suggests change is inex-
orable, somehow unchangeable, subject
only to inertia. But demography can be
fast.
It is said that demographers have an
“easy” job forecasting, especially com-
pared to, say, economists. This is not true,
however, especially at the national and
sub-national level. Changes in world pop-
ulations depend only on future births and
deaths. At the national level, migration fig-
ures in, and crucially so. Take Europe in
particular, where fertility and mortality are
both low and stable, yet migration – as we
have seen – is very hard to predict. The
idea of “inertia” does not help us at all.
Not only migrations can change fast.
Baby booms (and busts) and sudden
policy changes have changed the number
of births in the past. Even mortality can
change quickly, and not only for the worse
like we see in wars.
Yet censuses continue to be spaced ten
years apart, meaning they miss many of
these fast changes. Monitoring population
change requires continuous attention and
flows of data. In other words, if we are to
capture fast demography, we need data
just as fast as the economists.
Francesco C. Billari, University of
Oxford, United Kingdom
Contact: [email protected]
PopulationInsights
No. 01October 2015
www.population-europe.eu
Figures in Focus
STEADILY UPWARD: LIFE EXPECTANCY IN GREECE DEFIES CRISIS
This issue is in collaboration with University of Oxford, University of Rostock, and the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU).www.population-europe.eu
No. 01 | October 2015 1
Fast
D
emog
raph
y
|
Life
Ex
pect
ancy
in
G
reec
e
|
Pare
ntal
Le
ave
01
Greek life expectancy is on the rise. Between 2004 and 2013, life expectancy
at birth rose more than two full years from 79.3 to 81.4, keeping Greece above
the EU average (up 2.2 years to 80.6) and on par with some richer countries
like Germany (up 1.6 years to 80.9). Within the country, the change has not
been driven by rich regions only: Epirus (Ipeiros), the country’s poorest by GDP
per capita (2011), saw a rise in life expectancy similar to that of Athens (Attiki).
This data is useful because life expectancy, an important barometer of a popu-
lation’s overall health, can be quite sensitive to shocks. A classic example is the
rapid increase in life expectancy in East Germany after unification to West Ger-
man levels. Of course, it is not a perfect measure. Drug shortages, for instance,
will leave patients with specific conditions more vulnerable, but this vulnerability
may not necessarily be reflected in the larger numbers.
Imperfections notwithstanding, however, one could be forgiven for expecting
the worst for Greece. Over the summer there was no shortage of media cover-
age of the challenges facing the country’s healthcare system after several years
of macroeconomic contraction and cuts in public spending. Yet these numbers
indicate a certain resilience in Greece not hitherto reported.
We show in a forthcoming article [1] that such a non-response is not necessarily
an exception – economic crises appear to have only minor effects on lifespan in
rich countries. Combined with other major social and political changes, however,
the effects become stronger. In other words, it is uncertain whether Greek life
expectancy will remain unaffected in coming years.
Roland Rau and Christina Bohk-Ewald, University of Rostock, Germany
Contact: [email protected]
[1] Christina Bohk, Roland Rau (2015): Impact of Economic Conditions and Crises on Mortality and its Predictability. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (in press).
Source: Own illustrations on the basis of Eurostat data
Food for Thought
The European Commission’s new roadmap
on work-life balance for families seeks to im-
prove labour market participation of women.
Women’s employment, asserts the Commis-
sion, is “tightly linked to the distribution of
work and family responsibilities between
men and women” and, consequently, gender
gaps in pay and pensions [1].
The roadmap itself was presented in re-
sponse to political circumstances—namely,
the failure of the 2008 proposal for a new dir-
ective on maternity leave, which languished
in negotiations until it was withdrawn this
year. But the Commission’s broader concern
is that varying national policies lead to social
and economic inequalities between mem-
ber states. In fact, parental leave schemes
have a wide range of policy-relevant con-
sequences. For families it is a matter of fam-
ily and career planning, for firms a matter
of talent and costs, and for governments of
fertility, equality, competitiveness and solid-
ifying popular family structures.
The experience of Hungary and Poland indic-
ates that parental leave policies do indeed
affect the calculus of families and firms and
therefore deserve a place in the debate.
WORK IN POLAND, CHILDREN IN
HUNGARY
In our recent study [2], we selected these
two countries because they offer different
models of leave but share enough political,
economic and historical commonalities to
control for confounding factors. Our findings
show different schemes affect the likelihood
of having a second child and (re)entering
employment for women already on parental
leave.
We found that Hungary’s fairly generous,
universal (albeit tiered) leave system—
which grants employed mothers 70% of
their pre-maternity salary for 2 years and a
gradual reduction of payments thereafter—
increased the likelihood of second births
while on leave. It slowed mothers (re)entry
into work, however, potentially resulting in a
loss of human capital among Hungarian wo-
men compared to their Polish counterparts,
who returned to work much more quickly. In
Poland, employed (“insured”) mothers were
granted 100% of their salary but for only 4
to 5 months, after which payments dropped
off sharply to a means-tested minimum.
Figure 1 shows the intensity of mothers’
return to work over time in both systems,
responding to the payment “cliffs” described
above: at 2 years in Hungary and
6 months in Poland. The reactions
are almost opposite: The gradual
reduction of payments until the
child’s third birthday motivated
Hungarian women to intensify
their return after the cliff. In Po-
land, the precipitous drop in pay-
ments led the rate of re-entry to
spike before, then bottom out by
the end of Year One. Together, the
results indicate families are gen-
erally willing (and able) to forego
some of their income, perhaps,
but not all of it.
Ultimately, we can conclude that
better paid parental leave in-
volved certain advantages and
disadvantages. A good parental
leave policy should take into ac-
count the effects of leave on both
couples’ childbearing and women’s employ-
ment. Extended periods of leave clearly
help women to conceive their second child
quickly after the first but they also delay wo-
men’s return to paid work. The delay can
affect their future performance in the labour
market, resulting in the adoption of tradi-
tional divisions of labour within families—the
same arrangements that contribute to pay
gaps in the first place.
Anna Matysiak, Wittgenstein Centre,
Austria, and Ivett Szalma, Swiss Centre
of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS),
Switzerland
Contact: [email protected]
[1] ] European Commission Roadmap: “New start to ad-dress the challenges of work-life balance faced by working families”, August 2015, p. 1.[2] Anna Matysiak and Ivett Szalma: Effects of Parental Leave Policies on Second Birth Risks and Women’s Employ-ment Entry, Population-E, 69 (4), 2014, 599-636.
ImprintPublisher: Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science on behalf of the collaborative network “Population Europe“Editors: Andreas Edel (V.i.S.d.P.), Harald Wilkoszewski, Isabel Robles SalgadoContact: Population Europe Secretariat, Markgrafenstraße 37, 10117 Berlin, GermanyDistributed by: Population Europe Brussels Office, c/o Max Planck Society, Rue Royale 225-227, 1210 Brussels, BelgiumPhone: +32 (0)2 250 1419 | Fax: + 32 2 250 1420Email: [email protected] | Web: www.population-europe.eu
Twitter: @PopulationEU | Facebook: /PopulationEuropeIn cooperation with: Patrick I. Dick, Brussels, BelgiumLayout: The Brettinghams GmbH, Berlin, Germany; Emily LinesPrint: www.flyerpunk.de, Marienburger Straße 16, 10405 Berlin, Germany
This issue of Population Insights has been published with financial support from the Progress programme of the European Union in the framework of the project ”Supporting a Partnership for Enhancing Europe‘s Capacity to Tackle Demographic and Societal Change”.
No. 01 | October 2015www.population-europe.eu
Between work and (more) childrenParental leave in Central and Eastern Europe
DEMOGRAPHY & POLICY
2
No. 01 | October 2015Population Insights