The Global Leaders and Laggards in Parental Leave

A fair amount of progress has been made in recent years when it comes to parental leave allowances for fathers. As this chart using OECD data highlights though, in some countries there is still even a lot of work to be done in allowing mothers the valuable and arguably essential paid time off to care for their newborns.

At least in terms of sheer amount of time parents are entitled to take off upon having a child (effective rates of pay per week vary greatly), Finland is among the global leaders in parental leave. With a mix of time allocated to mothers, fathers and weeks shareable between the two, the Nordic country offers a total of 170 weeks per child. This scale of leave is as good as matched in Slovakia and Hungary, too.

The United States, however, somewhat famously has no paid allowance at all, for either parent. Not faring much better is Mexico with 13 weeks (one of which for the father), Israel with 15 (none for the father) and Switzerland with 16 (two for the father).