Abstracts Biological Sciences

The Role of Democracy and Development on Paid Parental Leave Worldwide

by Lauren Blumberg

Paid parental leave is important for the health of future generations and should be a protected right ensured through public policy. Countries vary widely on the policies they have in place to require paid parental leave for their citizens. The aim of this study is to examine the factors influencing paid leave policies worldwide. Specifically, this study will look into the effects of democracy and development on the length of paid parental leave. The variables studied include the length of paid maternal and paternal leave in weeks as the independent variable, and democracy, fertility rate, tertiary education rate, and rural population rate as the dependent variables. After performing separate multiple linear regressions, one each for maternal and paternal data, the results indicate that a higher level of democracy is significant in the paternal model, with a positive coefficient, but it was not significant in the maternal model. This shows that paid maternal leave is more common worldwide and that paid paternal leave is more common in democratically governed countries. In both regressions the school enrollment variable was used as a measure of development and was significant in both cases, with positive coefficients.