Family Policies in Europe: Available Databases and Initial Comparisons

Abstract

Population trends in recent years have prompted most European countries to introduce or expand family support policies. In particular, the decline in fertility since the 1970s might be harmful in the long term. The number of children per family is often below the desired number declared in surveys. State support is intended to close the gap by lowering the barriers to having children. The increase in divorce, separation and blended families, and the numbers of children born outside marriage and living with `lone' parents, have also prompted countries to increase support for families, particularly for struggling families, whose children are the most vulnerable to poverty. At the same time, governments have sought to encourage women's workforce participation by ensuring that these policies enable parents to strike a better balance between work and family. Consequently, the total investment of governments in benefits and services for families has strongly increased recently, reaching an average of 2.4% of GDP in 2003 in OECD countries, compared with 1.6% in 1980.

Full text

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2008, pp. 165-177 (DATA & TRENDS)
Family policies in Europe: available databases
and initial comparisons
Olivier Thévenon
∗
Abstract
Population trends in recent years have prompted most European countries to
introduce or expand family support policies. In particular, the decline in fertility
since the 1970s might be harmful in the long term. The number of children per
family is often below the desired number declared in surveys. State support is
intended to close the gap by lowering the barriers to having children. The increase
in divorce, separation and blended families, and the numbers of children born
outside marriage and living with ‘lone’ parents, have also prompted countries to
increase support for families, particularly for struggling families, whose children
are the most vulnerable to poverty. At the same time, governments have sought to
encourage women’s workforce participation by ensuring that these policies enable
parents to strike a better balance between work and family. Consequently, the
total investment of governments in benefits and services for families has strongly
increased recently, reaching an average of 2.4% of GDP in 2003 in OECD
countries, compared with 1.6% in 1980.
1 Women’s workforce participation and fertility:
reconciled objectives?
Family policies vary considerably from one country to another. Some countries
have long-standing family policies that have continuously developed ever since
they were introduced to counteract new risks for families. Other countries have
introduced family policies more recently and these still consist of a disparate set
of welfare measures.
Countries also have different objectives, with stated priorities ranging from
support for fertility, support for the work/family balance, reducing inequality in
living standards or reducing family poverty, to support for children’s healthcare
∗ Olivier Thévenon, Institut national d’études démographiques, 133 Boulevard Davout, 75980 Paris
Cedex 20, France. Email: olivier.thevenon@ined.fr. The author alone is responsible for the
opinions expressed in this paper.
DOI: 10.1553/populationyearbook2008s165

Family policies in Europe: available databases and initial comparisons
166
or education, or promotion of a more equitable division of family care between
men and women.
The two objectives of expanding women’s workforce participation and
increasing fertility were long considered at odds with each other. But the negative
correlation which was observed between female employment and fertility rates in
the early 1980s no longer exists—it even turned positive in the 2000s (Figure 1).
In fact, fertility rates are highest in those countries where the proportion of
women in the workforce is also highest. That is because public policies play a role
in reconciling these seemingly incompatible objectives. However, the resources
available to families for integrating work and family are different from country to
country. The types of government support vary according to the emphasis placed
on the family, the division of labour between men and women, and the labour
market (Esping-Andersen 1999; Thévenon 2006; Neyer 2006; Meulders and
O’Dorchai 2007).
Figure 1:
Total fertility rate and women’s workforce participation rate in OECD countries in
2005
AU
AT
BE
CA
CZ
DK
FI
FR
DE
GR
HU
IS
IR
IT
JP
KO
LU
MX
NL
NZ
NO
PL
PT
SK
ES
SW
CH
UK
US
OECD
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
40 50 60 70 80 90
Female employment rate (%)
To tal f ertility rate
AU: Australia, AT: Austria, BE: Belgium, CA: Canada, CH: Switzerland, CZ: Czech Republic,
KO: Korea, DE: Germany, DK: Denmark, ES: Spain, FI: Finland, FR: France, GR: Greece,
HU: Hungary, IR: Ireland, IS: Iceland, IT: Italy, JP: Japan, KO: Korea, LU: Luxembourg,
MX: Mexico, NL: Netherlands, NO: Norway, OECD: all OECD countries, PL: Poland,
PT: Portugal, SK: Slovakia, SW: Sweden, UK: United Kingdom, US: United States of America.
Source: OECD (2007).

Olivier Thévenon 167
2 Varied development of family support policies in Europe
To study these differences in policy, several databases have been created (see
Appendix for a presentation of different available databases). The most recent is
the Family Database developed at the OECD in 2006
(http://www.oecd.org/els/social/family/database). This dataset currently covers
OECD countries, and ultimately all EU member countries should also be
included. It contains socio-demographic contextual data as well as indicators on
support programmes, allowing comparisons of different configurations of family
policies, their context and their outcomes. In particular, the indicators make it
possible to compare policies on parental leave, child care and education facilities
and financial support. This information is also rounded out by macro-data on the
structure of families, fertility indicators and the impact of having children on
employment and on child welfare. Family policies can thus be compared in
relation to the context in which they are implemented (Thévenon 2007). The
results of an initial exploitation of this database make it possible to describe the
key differences in terms of support for working parents with young children.
A principal component analysis (PCA) of the OECD data makes it possible to
identify the main similarities and differences in family policies between European
countries (Thévenon 2008). The variables included in the analysis are all
described in Table 1. (Note that Table 1 shows all the data in the analysis but not
all the countries.) Apart from European countries, several other OECD countries
were included: Anglo-Saxon countries (USA, Australia, New Zealand) and Asian
countries (Japan and Korea). Figure 2 represents the countries’ positioning
according to that analysis. The analysis confirms the contrasts highlighted by
previous studies (Gornick et al. 1997; Gauthier 2002; De Hénau et al. 2006). The
more detailed data available in this database make it possible to highlight
heterogeneity within given groups of countries. Some countries exhibit
characteristics that are quite different from their geographical neighbours.

Table 1 :
Family policy characteristics in selected European countries
DE DK ES US FI FR IT HU JP IS NZ NL PL PT UK SW Average
Spending for maternity
and parental leave per
child (in % of GDP per
capita)
22 49 15 n.a. 57 28 20 89 13 50 4 17 30 15 7 64 30
Total length maternity
and parental leave (in
weeks)
170 50 172 12 200 172 57 180 12 26 12 40 172 41 52 66 83
Full-time equivalent
period of maternity
and parental leavea
25.4 46.8 16.0 0.0 42.9 56.2 20.4 69.8 8.4 20.8 6.0 16.0 38.7 17.0 12.0 52.8 27
Full-time eq. period of
paternity leave
0.0 2.0 0.4 0.0 3.0 2.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 10.4 0.0 0.4 2.0 1.0 0.5 9.2 1
Spending on child care
services (% of GDP)
0.8 2.3 0.7 0.6 1.4 1.6 0.7 1.5 0.4 1.8 0.4 0.9 0.5 0.9 0.8 1.9 1
Spending per child on
child care services for
children under 3 (US $
PPP)
3084 8009 1234 1803 4186 4009 2761 n.a. 1252 3408 672 2025 n.a. 1289 1850 5530 2522
Spending per child on
services for preschool
children (US $ PPP)
4865 4824 4151 7755 4069 4744 6116 3985 3766 6781 4325 5497 3269 4489 7153 4091 4614
Coverage rate of child
care services (0-2
years)
9.0 61.7 20.7 35.5 22.4 28.0 6.3 6.9 15.2 58.7 32.1 29.5 2.0 23.5 25.8 39.5 23
Coverage rate of
preschool (3-5 years)
80.3 89.7 98.6 62.0 46.1 100.0 100.0 86.9 86.4 94.7 92.7 70.2 36.2 77.9 80.5 86.6 77
Net child care costs for
dual earner familyb
8.4 7.8 n.a. 19.4 7.2 11.3 n.a. 6.5 14.2 14.9 27.5 11.5 4.6 4.2 32.7 6.2 13
Table continued on the next page

Table 1 (continued)
DE DK ES US FI FR IT HU JP IS NZ NL PL PT UK SW Average
Net child care costs
sole parentb’
6.8 8.5 n.a. 6.2 4.1 8.8 n.a. 0.0 14.0 13.5 14.3 3.0 12.7 2.0 14.4 4.8 12
Benefits and tax breaks
for families (% GDP)
2.19 1.62 0.47 0.76 1.59 2.20 0.59 2.06 0.78 1.51 1.91 1.22 0.99 0.92 2.54 1.59 2
Degree of targeting
support at low income
familiesc
0.9 2.9 2.5 2.8 2.2 1.4 0.0 0.6 5.0 2.4 11.2 1.0 7.4 3.9 2.7 1.7 3
Effective tax rate of a
transition to
employment (jobless
to one-earner couple)d
66 82 47 44 84 63 11 62 66 74 74 71 63 60 74 79 62
Effective tax rate of a
transition to
employment (one-
earner couple to two-
earners)d'
51 57 21 39 37 27 42 42 21 48 37 37 44 23 38 33 35
Effective tax rate for
sole parent transition
to employmente
78 85 52 39 64 75 -4 48 76 74 78 78 75 58 70 66 61
Source: OECD Family Database: www.oecd.org/els/social/family/database
Notes: a. Full-time equivalent is the proportion of the duration of leave if it were paid at 100% of last earnings: FTE = duration of leave in weeks*payment (as a percentage
of average earnings) received by the claimant. Benefits and payment rates applicable as of 1 January 2006.
b. Child care costs are estimated for a dual earner family with two children with full-time earnings of 167% of the average wage in 2004. The first earner is assumed to earn
the average wage and the second two thirds of it. The two children are assumed to be below 3 years old and to be cared for full-time (40 hours per week) (OECD 2007; chart
6.5). In b’ single parents are assumed to have two children under age 3 and to work full-time at 67% of the average wage.
c. Degree of targeting support at low income is estimated by the ratio of proportion of the financial assistance for children received by the families with initial low earnings
(up to 25% of average earnings) to the proportion received by families with two workers at average earnings (i.e. household income equals twice the average wage).
Assistance for children is calculated as the difference between the net income of a single-income couple without children and a single-income couple with two children,
expressed as a percentage of the average worker’s earning (OECD 2007; Table 4.2).
d. The household is supposed to have two children, aged four and six. Here effective tax rate is estimated when one partner is contemplating transitions into full-time work
paid at average rate, the other is supposed to be jobless (OECD 2007; Table 4.3). Neither child care benefits nor the cost of child care are taken into account here. In d’ the
first earner is supposed to move from inactivity to a full-time job paid at the average level, and the second earner is supposed to have full-time earnings equal to 67% of the
average wage (OECD 2007; Table 4.4).
e. Single parent with two children is supposed to move from inactivity to a full-time job paid at 2/3 of the average wave (OECD 2007; Table 4.7).

Family policies in Europe: available databases and initial comparisons
170
Figure 2:
OECD countries according to patterns of family policies
Source: Thévenon (2008).
2.1 The Nordic countries: substantial support for families with
young children
Two distinct groups of countries stand out for the first focus of the PCA: the
Nordic countries, on the right hand side of Figure 2, and the southern European
and Anglo-Saxon countries on the left. That division can be attributed mainly to
differences in the parental leave and child care systems for working parents with
children aged under three. Parental leave in the Nordic countries is longer than in
other countries: 53 weeks at the full-time equivalent of the average wage in
Sweden and 47 weeks in Denmark, compared with only 27 weeks on average for
all OECD countries (Table 1). The disparity can be attributed to a relatively high
compensation in Nordic countries, since the length of leave is limited.
Full-time equivalent leave specifically reserved for fathers is also longer than
in other countries: 13 weeks in Iceland and 11 weeks in Sweden, compared with

Olivier Thévenon 171
an OECD average of only one week. However, paternity leave actually consumed
only represents a tiny fraction of total parental leave, which is almost entirely
taken by women. In all, the spending on leave is much higher in the Nordic
countries, totalling on average 57% of per capita GDP for each child, versus 25%
in the other countries, and only 4.7% in the Anglo-Saxon countries.
The percentage of children in formal child care is also much higher in the
Nordic countries. Roughly half the children aged under three attend formal child
care there, compared with less than one-fifth in the OECD countries as a whole.
The amount invested per child is also much higher: on average $5,758 in
purchasing power parity in the Nordic countries, versus $2,520 for the OECD
average. However, the volume of cash benefits for families is below the average,
and clearly targets low-income families.
The total investment in child care and education for all children aged under
six is higher in the Nordic countries as well, at 1.8% of GDP on average, versus
0.7% in the other countries (and only 0.6% in the Anglo-Saxon and Asian
countries, and 0.7% in southern Europe).
2.2 Denmark: a model of a comprehensive family policy
Denmark and Iceland stand out from the other Nordic countries (Figure 2), and
partly for the same reasons: the percentage of children aged under three in formal
child care is much higher in those two countries (62% in Denmark and 59% in
Iceland). The level of spending on child care services is also higher in Denmark
(2.3% of GDP). The effective tax rate, i.e. the aggregate percentage of tax levied
on earned income, is also much higher in Denmark—and in all Nordic
countries—than in the other countries. That can be seen as the trade-off for the
relatively high level of support granted as paid leave and child care services
aimed at reconciling working and having young children. Denmark is probably
the most developed model based on strong public intervention offering high,
continuous support to enable parents to reconcile work and family. The system
provides relatively high financial security during parental leave. Leave is
relatively short but followed by easy access to formal child care then preschool
and school. Consequently, the fertility rate is among the highest, with a
particularly high (full-time equivalent) female employment rate. A high women’s
workforce participation nevertheless comes at the expense of a pronounced
occupational segregation between men and women (Gilles and Terraz 2008).
2.3 The Anglo-Saxon countries: support targeted on
preschool-age children and poor households
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the Nordic countries, the Anglo-Saxon
countries, Japan, Korea and the southern European countries are in a similar
position to each other, with generally lower support for reconciling work and

Family policies in Europe: available databases and initial comparisons
172
children aged under three. There is little or no compensation during leave after the
birth of a child. The supply of child care and education services is also generally
lower, but there are sharp variations between countries. Public investment is also
clearly targeted on preschool education. Public spending per child aged under
three and attendance at child care facilities are much lower than for children aged
three to six.
However, the Anglo-Saxon countries, plus Switzerland and Japan and Korea,
differ from southern Europe in several respects, as illustrated by the vertical
opposition between these two groups of countries in Figure 2. First, support for
families through family benefits and tax breaks is much higher. It is actually the
main form of intervention in those countries, where such support accounts for
1.9% of GDP, compared with 1.6% for the OECD average (the USA is an
exception, with only 0.8%). This support also clearly targets low-income families
and has an objective of poverty reduction. A little more than one child in four
(28%) nevertheless attend formal child care, often private, compared with an
OECD average of slightly fewer than one in four (23%).
2.4 … and a work/family balance based on labour-market
flexibility
In other words, the Anglo-Saxon countries are characterised by limited public
support for reconciling work and children aged under three. Public investment is
higher for preschool facilities for children aged three and over, usually on a part-
time basis. The main objective is to provide preschool education to ensure equal
opportunity for all children. In this context, the reconciliation of work and family
life is fairly strongly based on the adjustment allowed by labour-market
flexibility, i.e. the ability to change jobs without being unemployed for too long
and especially the increase in part-time employment for women with small
children. The work/family balance is therefore based on strong asymmetry
between the positions of men and women in the labour market and implies that
families with small children forego some income, which is not offset by public
support. Family income is therefore often inadequate and family poverty rates are
among the highest in these countries. Conversely, the adjustment made via the
labour market enables these countries to maintain high fertility rates.
2.5 Southern Europe: more limited assistance
In the other countries, fertility and women’s workforce participation rates are
generally lower. They are especially low in most of southern Europe, where
poverty rates are also higher. These countries are characterised by a ‘deficit’ of
policies, whichever aspect is considered. The volume of cash benefits for families
is very low. Parental leave can be relatively long, but uncompensated or poorly
compensated. Portugal stands out from the rest of this group with slightly shorter

Olivier Thévenon 173
parental leave, more targeted cash benefits for low-income families, and much
higher attendance of children under three in formal child care: 23% in Portugal,
versus less than 7% in Italy and Greece. Spain has almost the same low
attendance at child care services, but much longer, unpaid parental leave.
The other countries, in eastern and central Europe, hold an intermediate
position, except for France and Hungary, where indicators are far higher than
average for all forms of family support. The length of parental leave equivalent to
employment at the average wage there is longer than in most countries in central
and eastern Europe. Above all, cash benefits for children are far less targeted on
low-income families than in the other countries. The investment in child care
services is also significantly higher than average, but attendance among children
under three is much higher in France (29%) than in Hungary (7%).
2.6 Eastern Europe: at the crossroads of diversity?
Compared to the other three eastern European countries (i.e. the Czech Republic,
Poland and Slovakia), Hungary provides more comprehensive support to parents
with a young child through a balanced combination of policy support: parental
leave payment compensation is higher (70 weeks of full-time equivalent against
39 in Poland and 35 in Czech Republic); public spending on child care services is
also higher and their coverage for preschool children is also higher (87% of
children) than in Poland (36%), for example; families are also supported through
relatively generous financial benefits which sum to 2% of GDP compared to only
1% in Poland. However, the poorest families receive a relatively small share of
this support compared to households earning two average wages. Slovakia is also
in a remarkable position with a rather limited period of paid parental leave, while
unpaid leave can be extended to three years. Investments in child care facilities
are also relatively low despite higher coverage rates for children under age 2 than
in other eastern European countries. As in Hungary, the level of family benefits is
relatively high in percentage of GDP but does not appear to target poor families in
particular. Thus, the combination of a long period of unpaid leave and the limited
availability of other types of support make Slovakia comparable to most southern
European countries. However, this situation is still quite specific in a geographical
area where the development of family and child care policies has varied in its
timing and followed different patterns (Szelewa and Polakowski 2008).
3 Conclusion
The development of increasingly detailed databases on family support makes it
possible to access recent information to highlight more precise differences
between countries than those established in the past between different welfare

Family policies in Europe: available databases and initial comparisons
174
systems. In conclusion, it is worth noting some of the main limitations of these
databases for comparing family support:
• First, the information available on family support primarily concerns
support for families with children, on which the OECD database concentrates (at
least initially). The period of early childhood is therefore fairly well covered, but
data on support for families with older children are fairly rare and hard to obtain.
However, in the context of an ageing population, in future these databases should
not only cover support for families with children as comprehensively as possible,
but also support for families that have to care for dependent elderly members.
• The comparison of policies can also be biased by the fact that local
support is only rarely taken into account, even though it has had a considerable
and growing impact in some countries in recent years.
• Similarly, knowledge of support financed by companies is only partial,
even though companies are actors whose importance is more and more broadly
recognised.
• Finally, and this may be the biggest problem with the databases on family
policies, the available information concerns only support offered, not policy take-
up, i.e. to what extent the mechanisms are actually used. The difficulty in
estimating the use of parental leave is a good illustration of this problem: while
administrative statistics can be used to estimate the number of people taking
parental leave, it is generally more difficult to estimate the ‘eligible’ population.
However, being able to compare actual policy take-up more effectively is a key to
better assessing their effects on fertility and other behaviour.
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Family policies in Europe: available databases and initial comparisons
176
Appendix: Available databases for the analysis of policies
supporting families and their impact on fertility
To study these differences in policy, several databases are available in addition to
the OECD Family Database presented above. The data can be used to compare
various aspects of family support over different periods, depending on the
reconstituted time series. Some of the databases include socio-demographic
contextual data as well as indicators on support programmes to allow comparisons
of different configurations of family policies, their context and their outcomes.
The EDACwowe website (http://www.edacwowe.eu/), developed by the EU
“Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe” Network of Excellence, draws on
most of the information sources available at national and international level to
compare employment and welfare systems in Europe. The site lists the sources of
socio-demographic data, information on public opinion, and policies or
institutions that deal with income and benefits, work and employment, care and
living standards. Below is a short description of the main databases available on
family policy.
The website of the Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child,
Youth and Family Policies at Columbia University (http://childpolicyintl.org/)
comprises information on benefits and services for families in 23 industrialised
countries. There are also data on population trends, social indicators, including
child welfare, and information on support for the work/family balance.
Two other databases on family policies have been released by the
Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). One database describes policies to reconcile
work and family as observed in 14 countries in the mid-1980s
(http://www.lisproject.org/publications/fampol/fampolaccess.htm). That database
was used by Janet Gornick, Marcia Meyers and Katherin Ross (1997) to compare
support for working mothers. The other database is an update of the first one to
the early 2000s in 12 countries (covering northern Europe, continental Europe, the
UK, Canada and the USA). It contains much more detailed information about
parental leave, child care attendance and a special module on work-time
legislation. Gornick and Meyers (2003) used these data to compare policies
favouring the work/life balance. The LIS also proposes six waves of harmonised
microdata covering some 30 countries in 2004 on household structure, socio-
economic status, income and income structure (percentage of welfare benefits in
income).
The University of Calgary has also set up a comparative database that
includes information about cash benefits, the associated public spending, parental
leave, and population and employment trends (http://www.soci.ucalgary.ca/FYPP).
The database covers 22 OECD countries and proposes annual time series for the
years 1970 to 2000. Anne Gauthier (2002) used these data to show that, in 2000,
benefits and leave policies were more heterogeneous within a group of countries
than they were in the early 1980s.

Olivier Thévenon 177
The Generations and Gender Programme steered by the United Nations
Economic Commission for Europe also includes the creation of a contextual
database to round out surveys of individuals with a set of detailed information
about the economic and institutional context. The information gathered covers
demographic and economic contexts, the labour market, family policies, including
support for child care or care for elderly dependents, the tax system and the
pension system. More qualitative information on political systems is provided as
well. The advantage of this context database is that it contains detailed
information at regional level, and time series permitting a ‘multi-level’ analysis
(Spielauer 2004). It also gives access to information on eastern European
countries that is otherwise difficult to obtain. However, the number of countries
covered by the database is limited (Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania,
Poland, Norway, Romania, Russia and France in 2008).
In addition to the information available in these databases, more precise data
on family policy spending are available in the European System of Integrated
Social Protection Statistics database (ESSPROS) coordinated by Eurostat. The
data available can be usefully rounded out with qualitative information on social
protection systems regularly updated by the European Social Protection System in
Member States (MISSOC): http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/spsi/missoc_en.htm.
Covering the 27 member countries of the European Union, this harmonised base
of welfare accounts provides information about the amounts spent on support for
child care, parental leave and cash benefits for families. The main advantage of
this database is that it offers updated harmonised data, which can be used to
reconstitute time series starting in the early 1980s. However, there are gaps
because some expenditure items are hard to classify and because some types of
family support are left out. In particular, the data on support provided at local—as
opposed to national—level, financial benefits provided through the tax system, or
spending on preschool education are not always complete, and the comparisons
based on them can be skewed (Math and Thévenon, 2008). To round out those
data, the Family Database being developed at the OECD includes estimates of
these items in the set of indicators concerning family support policies.