Fathers’ parental leave uptake remains low in many advanced economies despite substantial policy efforts. We study a setting where financial and eligibility barriers are minimal: employed, Swedish-born first-time fathers entitled to generous, nontransferable leave benefits. Using Swedish population register data for 1995–2015, we document three key facts: (i) low uptake is concentrated at the bottom and top of the income distribution, with lower rates among middle-income fathers, (ii) its determinants vary across the distribution—economic constraints at the bottom and top, workplace norms in the middle—and (iii) these constraints have grown more salient over time. Quota reforms increased uptake on average but did not narrow differences in low uptake between constrained and unconstrained fathers. Using quasi-random sibling-sex composition, we find suggestive evidence that, among middle-income fathers in recent cohorts, those exposed to more traditional gender-role environments in childhood are overrepresented among fathers with low uptake. This pattern is consistent with the idea that, as overall uptake has increased, the remaining group of low-uptake fathers is increasingly selected on traditional norms. The results highlight the limits of financial incentives and point to workplace and household norms as central barriers to equal parental leave participation.

As women’s earnings have risen and parental leave policies expanded, social expectations for paternal involvement have grown, potentially shifting the basis of fatherhood from economic provision toward parenting skills. Using Swedish administrative data and a sibling fixed-effects design, we find that non-cognitive ability, a key dimension of parenting skills, has become a stronger predictor of fatherhood over time among men with comparable earnings and marital histories. Exploiting a 2002 reform that expanded reserved paternity leave, we further demonstrate that heightened expectations for paternal involvement amplified this selection.

I rapporten ger professor Anne Boschini en översikt av kunskapsläget om konkurrensutsättningen har påverkat lönerna och företagandet i vård- och omsorgssektorn. Svaren kring lönerna är tvetydiga. Viljan att hålla nere kostnaderna i privat verksamhet står mot att ökad konkurrens vanligen driver upp lönerna. Trots frågans angelägenhet är området överraskande underbeforskat. För att veta hur privatiseringen har gynnat kvinnor i vård- och omsorgsyrken och vilka reformer som behövs krävs mer kunskap.

Using Swedish administrative data, this study investigates the link between wealth and sexual orientation across genders, focusing on nearly 4400 individuals who have ever been in a same-sex legal union and their siblings who had been exclusively in different-sex relationships. Employing unconditional quantile regressions and sibling fixed effects, we show that the wealth gap by gender and sexual orientation varies across the wealth distribution. Men in same-sex couples (SSCs) experience a wealth penalty below the 70th percentile but a premium above it. For women, the wealth penalty persists until the 95th percentile. Similar patterns hold for the wealth subcomponents, with men in SSCs holding more financial resources, real estate and debt at the top of the distributions, while women in SSCs hold more financial resources but less real estate and total debt. Additional analysis highlights the positive marginal effects of urban residency and years of schooling on these patterns.

Den ökade jämställdheten, både vad gäller ekonomi och föräldraansvar, har radikalt förändrat vad det innebär att vara pappa. Rapportförfattarna har studerat om denna förändring har haft någon betydelse för vilka män som blir pappor och vilka pappor som involverar sig aktivt i omhändertagandet av sina barn och tar ut föräldraledighet. Med svenska data över mäns förmågor finner de att icke-kognitiv förmåga, enkelt beskrivet som social kompetens, har blivit viktigare för att bli pappa, oavsett inkomstnivå och om man har en partner eller inte. De finner också att de fäder som inte tar ut ledighet är i allt högre grad är låginkomsttagare och tjänar mindre än barnens mor. Resultaten tyder på att det behövs åtgärder med fokus på att stödja utvecklingen av sociala förmågor bland män, att stödja fäder med bristande ekonomiska resurser och att bryta traditionella könsnormer.

Despite multiple reforms aimed at encouraging fathers to take parental leave, a significant portion of fathers still choose not to take any leave. In this paper, we exploit quasi-experimental variation in parental leave reforms and in gender norms to provide a causal analysis of how the group of fathers with no parental leave uptake has changed over time using high-quality Swedish register data. To account for selection into fatherhood and general trends in the population of fathers, we study differences in traits relative to the average father. We find that while some of the non-leave taking fathers have poor health or criminal convictions, they are not very different in this regard from the total population of fathers. Instead, we observe a clear trend indicating that the non-leave taking fathers are increasingly facing economic constraints in terms of having a low income and earning less than the mother. We show that the fathers with weak labor market attachment are the least compliant with parental leave quotas and present suggestive evidence that non-leave taking fathers and mothers in couples with such fathers have become more likely to conform to traditional gender norms. The results suggest that reforms reserving additional months for each parent will have a limited impact on the fathers who do not take any parental leave. Instead, policies may need to target the lack of economic resources or gender norms of both the father and the mother. 

While the rising income share of top earners has received enormous attention in recent years, the share of women at the top has not been examined as closely. This column analyses income tax data from Sweden, where taxes are filed individually regardless of marital status. It finds that while the share of women among the wealthiest groups has steadily increased over time, women remain a clear minority, especially at the very top. Unlike top-income men, top-income women are much more likely to have partners who are also in the top of the income distribution.

We explore the extent to which LIS-data can be used to shed light on the presence of women in the top of the income distribution. We show developments of the share of women in top groups (P90-100 and P99-100) of the labour income distribution for 28 countries and, when possible, compare to outcomes when including capital incomes. These turn out not to matter much for the share of women in top groups with some important exceptions. Relating our findings to the existing evidence on women in the top of the income distribution based on aggregate tax data, we find that LIS-data give a relatively accurate picture of the basic findings. However, we also note that once we divide the top1 group further, samples quickly become too small to allow further study. For countries where data allows such analysis, we find that having a partner and having children are positively associated with being in top income groups for men, but negatively associated for women. However, time interactions suggest that these differences have decreased over time. Also, top income men are more likely to have partners who are not in the top of the income distribution while this is not the case for top income women. All these results are surprisingly consistent across country groups.

Using yearly register data on the full population of Sweden we study gender differences in top incomes, down to the top 0.01 percentile group, over the period 1971–2017. We find that, while women are still a minority of the top decile, and typically make up a smaller share the higher up in the distribution we move, their presence has steadily increased in all top groups over the past half-century. At the beginning of the period, top income women relied more on capital incomes, but the rise in the share of top women is not due to the growing importance of capital. Instead, women have increased their presence in the top by gains in the top of labour incomes, while top income men have captured most of the growth in capital incomes. Studying gender differences in observable characteristics we find small gender differences in some respects, convergence in others, but also some important remaining differences. Overall, our results suggest that many findings in the top income literature have a clear gender component and that understanding gender equality in the top of the distribution requires studying not only earnings and labour market outcomes but also incomes from other sources, as well as family circumstances.