How do immigrants use parental leave in Sweden?

Eleonora Mussino, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Ann-Zofie Duvander, Stockholm University

Sweden is a universalistic welfare state with a system of social policies directed towards working parents and a strong emphasis on gender equality without any distinction by citizenship. However, previous studies have shown that dramatic differences persist in the use of parental leave between immigrants and Swedish-born, even when the main socio-demographic characteristics are taken into account. In this study, we hypothesize that there are persisting differences in the uptake of parental leave between Swedish-born and foreign-born women and men. Partly these differences can be explained by status differences in the labor market. In particular we would like to answer to the following questions: Once that we control for labor market status, are the differences in the use of parental leave between immigrant and Swedish-born parents remaining? Which are the factors that most influence this segmentation? To address our research questions we use data from the population registers. We will focus on the cohorts of newborn between 1998 and 2004, following their parents each year during the subsequent four years. We expect different distributions of days during the period, over time and for the subpopulations under study. Our main interest will be how immigrant status in relation to labor market status and income influence the parental leave use of mothers and fathers. We will consider yearly use of parental leave benefits and estimate the leave length for fathers and mothers as well as the share of each parent.