The political economy of family policy expansion

Ferragina, Emanuele

doi:10.1080/09692290.2019.1627568

Cited by 28 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Paid parental leave offerings primarily emerged as efforts to enhance mother and child health outcomes due to the health risks and pains associated with childbirth as well as expectations that mothers primarily care for children after birth (Daly and Ferragina, 2018;Koslowski et al, 2019;Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2017;World Bank Group, 2018). Yet, paid leave offerings have also been increasingly designed with a variety of employment outcome and gender equity goals in mind; some paid leave is viewed as essential in supporting mothers' employment opportunities, but too much paid leave can dampen particularly less-educated mothers' employment commitments (Akgunduz and Plantenga, 2013;Boeckmann et al, 2015;Budig et al, 2015;Daly and Ferragina, 2018;Ferragina, 2019;Keck and Saraceno, 2013;Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2017). Thus, paid parental leave offerings have also been increasingly implemented with the intent to offer greater flexibility for families to manage paid and domestic work commitments and to encourage not only mothers, but also fathers, to spend time caring for and bonding with their children.…”

Section: Gender and Paid Parental Leave Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, we would expect to find some concordance between extant leave policies and leave preferences. Related to this, parental leave preferences and the significance of extant leave policies may depend upon more complete explicit family policy packages that also include country-level approaches to the provision of child care, early childhood education, and child-income (Daly and Ferragina, 2018;Ferragina, 2019;2020). Further, while previous research offers descriptions of the benefits and patterns of paid parental leave practices across countries, scholars have yet to comprehensively document the extent to which especially prominent social forces that are connected to leave-taking decisions and preferences--such as gendered expectations, family strains, and extant offerings at the country-level--may contribute to public opinions about leave offerings across countries.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comparatively more research has focused on better understanding the effects of parental leave policies for individuals rather than on individuals' preferences for paid leave offerings across countries and how such preferences may vary by individuals' unique country contexts (Daly and Ferragina, 2018;Ferragina, 2019;2020;Misra and Boeckmann, 2016;Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2017;Petts et al, 2018;Valarino et al, 2018). Therefore, there is a need to complement inquiries that focus on dynamics within particular countries with more wide-ranging foundational analyses of individuals' paid leave preferences and the country-level and individual-level factors that shape them (Daly and Ferragina, 2018;Li et al, 2021;Valarino et al, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Attitudes about paid parental leave: Cross-national comparisons and the significance of gendered expectations, family strains, and extant leave offerings

Knoester¹,

Petts

2021

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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Using data on paid parental leave preferences from 35,488 adults situated within 26 different OECD countries, and multilevel modeling, this study examines public opinions about the provision of paid parental leave, some government funding of leave offerings, and preferred lengths of leave offerings. We consider how attitudes may be similar or different across social contexts and then focus upon the extent to which gender, gendered parenting role attitudes, family strains, and country-level institutionalized leave offerings are associated with leave preferences. The findings indicate that the vast majority of respondents are in favor of rather widespread and generous paid parental leave offerings; indeed, there are generally high levels of support for paid leave availability, relatively long paid leave offerings, and government funding of leaves. Gendered expectations and family strains are consistently associated with individuals’ leave preferences—even after accounting for country-level social contexts. Country-level offerings are also associated with leave preferences—yet, we find that the overwhelming majority of respondents express a desire for paid parental leave length offerings that are substantially different than the extant leave offerings in their country. Overall, this research complements previous work by newly documenting widespread public support for the provision of paid leave and some government funding of it. Also, it establishes that gendered expectations, family strains, and country-level practices are consistently associated with paid parental leave preferences in wealthy countries. Yet, substantial dissatisfaction with extant paid leave policies within countries seems to be commonplace.

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Section: Gender and Paid Parental Leave Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attitudes about paid parental leave: Cross-national comparisons and the significance of gendered expectations, family strains, and extant leave offerings

Knoester¹,

Petts

2021

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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“…Over the last five decades, the family policy systems of developed countries have become increasingly diverse and layered into national income transfer and welfare service systems [75]. Public childcare expansion has been "the most remarkable family policy development" [76] (p. 2) and "the most recent and most rapidly expanding component of the family policy package" [77] (p. 21), which has sought to mitigate the social risks of modern society while promoting economic policy efforts by enabling women to participate in working life.…”

Section: Economic and Environmental Aspects Of Family And Child Welfarementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Family Life and Child Welfare: A Conceptual Framework

2020

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Although there have been developments in family and child welfare services, these have not been prioritized from a sustainability perspective. This article aims to provide a framework for supporting sustainable provisions for family and child welfare. We demonstrate how the need for a socially sustainable stance on family and child welfare arises from the recognition of global changes that constantly influence families as well as children’s rights, which ground child- and family-centered actions. The conceptual framework includes three overarching dimensions and four levels of actors that provide a body for 16 conceptual entities in providing socially sustainable family and child welfare. The analysis showed that functional child welfare and family policies, systems, and practices appear essential elements, even necessary preconditions, of sustainability and sustainable development in general. Leaning on the concept of children’s rights, we conclude that the idea of child welfare promises citizens that society has committed to promoting all children’s wellbeing. Implementation of this requires a shared understanding that the conceptual framework provided in this paper urges to actualize.

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“…However, as far as empirical quantitative research is concerned, they tend to focus solely on family and gender issues disregarding a more general welfare state model which includes the interplay between the state and the 2 F. Chybalski and E. Marcinkiewicz market in welfare provision, not only care provision. A study by Ferragina (2019) investigating the relationships between family policy expansion and the political economy of a welfare state is one of the rare exceptions in this regard. The conclusion drawn is that two movements across OECD countries can be observed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating pro-family and pro-female components into empirical welfare state classification: some new evidence for European countries

Chybalski

Marcinkiewicz

2021

Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research

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In this paper, we attempt to incorporate an innovative and more comprehensive view of defamilization into the comparative analysis of real-type welfare state models. The study presents four empirically distinguished welfare state regimes where we consider separately both notions associated with (de)familization and (de)genderization together with other dimensions characterizing different welfare state models. In a multivariate statistical analysis framework, we examine 25 European countries using data covering the period between 2014 and 2017. Our findings suggest that whereas Southern European countries represent various welfare state models, most of the analyzed Central and Eastern European countries form a separate group. Similarly, the Nordic countries, except Iceland, belong to the same cluster. However, CEE countries and Nordic countries represent extremely divergent models in terms of the degree of degenderization, but similar in terms of family policy, the public-private mix, as well as welfare state generosity. The data also show that the extensive welfare state coexists with the state's predominance in delivering welfare provisions. Moreover, we demonstrate that neither the general size of the welfare state or its public-private mix nor a pro-family policy differentiate the socio-economic situation of women across countries studied.

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The political economy of family policy expansion

Cited by 28 publications

References 90 publications

Attitudes about paid parental leave: Cross-national comparisons and the significance of gendered expectations, family strains, and extant leave offerings

Attitudes about paid parental leave: Cross-national comparisons and the significance of gendered expectations, family strains, and extant leave offerings

Sustainable Family Life and Child Welfare: A Conceptual Framework

Incorporating pro-family and pro-female components into empirical welfare state classification: some new evidence for European countries

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