How can we become more equal? Public policies and parents’ work-family preferences in Germany
This study uses Sen’s (1985) “capabilities framework” to examine how public policies affect parents’ preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers’ and fathers’ work-family preferences, namely, the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare, the right to return to a full-time job after working part-time, and an extension of “partner months” in parental leave schemes. Analyzing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany, we find that, on average, fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Our analyses, however, also show that full-time working parents have preferences for shorter hours and that non-employed parents would prefer longer hours independent of the policy setting. Last but not least, we find that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers’ preferences for longer and mothers’ preferences for shorter periods of parental leave. Our main conclusion is that extending the number of partner months in parental schemes has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.