Child-Care in Norway: Use of Parental Leave by Fathers

An important feature of parental leave in Norway is that it allows significant sharing of leave between parents. Parents may take 54 weeks of leave and receive 80 per cent of previous earnings or 44 weeks of leave with 100 per cent of earnings, up to a ceiling amount. Nine weeks of total leave are, however, reserved for the mother and six weeks for the father and, as a general rule, these weeks cannot be transferred to the other parent. The remaining parental leave can be shared between parents. A reserved period of leave for fathers, known as the paternity quota, was introduced in 1993. Initially, this quota was four weeks. The paternity quota has been a great success and is utilized by 80–85 per cent of eligible fathers; however, very few fathers share gender-neutral parental leave. In this paper, we use register data to investigate factors that may influence fathers’ share of parental leave for children born in 2001. We find that married fathers use more leave than cohabitants. In addition, fathers’ education, mothers’ income and number of preschool children positively affect fathers’ use of the paternity quota and gender-neutral leave. Fathers’ workplace does not affect the use of the paternity quota but has a significant effect on the use of gender-neutral leave.Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination; Public Policy.

The Impact of a Cash Benefit Reform on Parents’ Labour Force Participation.

This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family policy reform. The reform provides benefits of up to NOK 3000 per month to all families with 1-3 year old children, who do not utilise state subsidised day care centres. We investigate the reform’s effect on parents’ labour force participation. Our findings suggest that, on average, women’s labour force participation decreases and specialisation of work between couples increases after the reform. When we evaluate the reform’s impact in association with women’s schooling we find that the decrease in the labour force participation of mothers who have university level schooling is larger as compared with mothers who have less than university schooling.Public policy; Cash benefits; Specialisation

Effect of Cash-Benefit Reform on Immigrants’ Labour Supply and Earnings

This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family-policy reform on the labour supply of native and three groups of immigrant women in Norway. The reform provides cash benefits to families with one- to three-year-old children, who do not utilize state-subsidized day-care centres. We find that natives and non-Western immigrants quit the labour market. However, the effect is trivial for natives whereas it is more significant for immigrants. Given participation, earnings of natives and all groups of female immigrants fell after the cash-benefit reform. Specifically, earnings of non-Western immigrants fell by more than those of natives and OECD immigrants.Cash-benefit Reform; Integration policy; Immigrants

Does paternity leave affect mothers’ sickness absence

Female labour force participation is high in Norway but sickness absence rates are higher for women than for men. This may be partly a result of unequal sharing of childcare in the family. In this paper, we consider the effect of paternity leave on sickness absence among women who have recently given birth. We draw on a six-year panel taken from full population data from administrative sources. We find that in the 6% of families where fathers take out leave more than the standard quota (gender-neutral leave), the incidence of absence among mothers is reduced by about 5–10% from an average level of 20%.Parental leave; paternity quota; gender neutral leave; sickness absence

Emotional Qualities of VR Space

The emotional response a person has to a living space is predominantly affected by light, color and texture as space-making elements. In order to verify whether this phenomenon could be replicated in a simulated environment, we conducted a user study in a six-sided projected immersive display that utilized equivalent design attributes of brightness, color and texture in order to assess to which extent the emotional response in a simulated environment is affected by the same parameters affecting real environments. Since emotional response depends upon the context, we evaluated the emotional responses of two groups of users: inactive (passive) and active (performing a typical daily activity). The results from the perceptual study generated data from which design principles for a virtual living space are articulated. Such a space, as an alternative to expensive built dwellings, could potentially support new, minimalist lifestyles of occupants, defined as the neo-nomads, aligned with their work experience in the digital domain through the generation of emotional experiences of spaces. Data from the experiments confirmed the hypothesis that perceivable emotional aspects of real-world spaces could be successfully generated through simulation of design attributes in the virtual space. The subjective response to the virtual space was consistent with corresponding responses from real-world color and brightness emotional perception. Our data could serve the virtual reality (VR) community in its attempt to conceive of further applications of virtual spaces for well-defined activities.Comment: 12 figure