Employed or inactive? Cross-national differences in coding parental leave beneficiaries in European Labour Force Survey data
(2013) Survey Research Methods — Vol. 7, n° 3, p. 169-179 (2013)
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- Authors
- 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 rates and warns about possible bias in cross-national studies.
- Affiliations
CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg Population et Emploi
Citations
Mikucka, M., & Valentova, M. (2013). Employed or inactive? Cross-national differences in coding parental leave beneficiaries in European Labour Force Survey data. Survey Research Methods, 7(3), 169-179. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/47425 (Original work published 2013)