Abstract
In survey research the parental leave beneficiaries are usually coded as either employed or inactive. An exception is the European Labor Force Survey (EU-LFS), which includes parental leave among other forms of being employed but temporarily not working. This paper explores classification of parental leave takers in EU-LFS. We show that classification rules differ cross-nationally: in some countries parental leave takers are considered inactive, in others -- employed but temporarily not working. In particular in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Slovakia the EU-LFS data classify the beneficiaries as inactive. We estimate the number of mothers on parental leave in these countries and show that EU-LFS employment rates of women aged 18-40 are biased downwards 2-7 percentage points; for mothers of children aged 0-2 the bias reaches 12-45 percentage points. Our study shows the limited comparability of EU-LFS employment
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 169-179 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Survey Research Methods |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2013 |
Keywords
- Cross-country comparability
- Employment status
- Labor force survey
- Measurement
- Parental leave
- Women's employment