Five years after the reform of parental leave (PreParE), are the objectives met?

Summary The law on real equality between women and men passed in 2014 introduced the PreParE (Prestation partagée d'éducation de l'enfant). Its objective was to encourage the use of parental leave by fathers to devote more time to parental tasks and, on the other hand, to encourage mothers to return to the labor market more quickly in order to contribute to the reduction of professional inequalities related to the arrival of a child. The law modifies the duration and distribution of the right to the allowance between parents: for a first child, the maximum duration of payment has been extended from six months to be shared between the two parents before the reform to six months for each parent after the reform. from the second child onwards, the reform reduces the period of compensation to a maximum of two years for the same parent instead of three initially, which obliges the other parent to take part of the leave to cover the period until the child is three years old. Using data from the file of recipients made available by the Cnaf, we evaluate the effects of the switch to PreParE on the use of the benefit and on families' income. The method and additional results are detailed in a working paper (Périvier and Verdugo, 2021). Main results on the use of the scheme: 1) Fathers' use of the parental leave allowance hardly increased: ■ For full leave, fathers' use increased from 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent regardless of the child's rank. ■ For part-time leave, the use of fathers of a first child increased from 0.7 percent to 0.9 percent and that of fathers with two or more children from 1 percent to 1.8 percent . ■ These rates remain well below the stated goals of 25% of fathers taking leave. 2) A large majority of fathers working part-time did not use the scheme: ■ We estimate that 70% of fathers (compared with only 25% of mothers) working part-time gave up the parental leave allowance to which they are entitled without changing their activity behavior and, since the reform, without reducing their spouse's leave entitlement. Main effects on household income: The activity income (labor income and unemployment benefits) of mothers, among those who had a non-zero activity income two years before the birth, increased substantially while that of fathers remained unchanged: ■ On average this increase compensates for the loss of the allowance during the third year. ■ The increase in mothers' labor force earnings reduced the earnings gap between parents three years after the child's birth by 14 percent . ■ The effects of the reform on household incomes varied greatly according to mothers' initial income levels, measured two years before the birth. Finally, the reform had no effect on the couple's probability of having another child or of separating within five years of the birth.