Tracking parenting leave policies in Europe over five decades
The European Parenting Leave Policies (EPLP) Dataset provides harmonised data on maternity, co-parent, paid parental, and job-protected leave regulations across
21 European countries from 1970 to 2024. These policies shape how long birth mothers and co-parents can be away from paid work around childbirth, and how leave can be shared between them.
By covering 33 variables on leave duration, benefits, flexibility, and incentives for sharing leave between couples, the dataset enables quantitative analyses of policy trends, cross-national differences, and the effects of major reforms – for researchers, policymakers, and others interested in family policy.
A coordinated effort of 30 researchers and
national experts across Europe, led by the
Vienna Institute of Demography
Project Leaders
Sonja Spitzer
Adèle Lemoine
Project Team
Zhanxiong Song
Claudia Reiter
Angela Greulich
Agneta Herlitz
Country Experts
Alžběta Bártová
Elisa Brini
Zuzana Dančíková
Dovilė Galdauskaitė
Libertad González
Evi Hatzivarnava-Kazassi
Helena Honkaniemi
Sol P. Juárez
Rannveig K. Hart
Ida Lykke Kristiansen
Anna Kurowska
Katre Pall
Barbara Pertold-Gebicka
Tatjana Rakar
Tapio Räsänen
Konstantina Rentzou
Pedro Romero Balsas
Eva-Maria Schmidt
Laurène Thil
Dora Tuda
Lili Vargha
Daniele Vignoli
Sander Wagner
Katharina Wrohlich
Dataset Documentation
The accompanying documentation includes timelines of major parenting-leave reforms for each of the 21 countries, the full codebook for all 33 variables, definitions, and the data collection guidelines
The European Parenting Leave Policies Dataset is available on Zenodo, the EU’s open-science repository
How to cite the dataset
Spitzer, S., Lemoine, A., Song, Z., Reiter, C., Greulich, A., Herlitz, A., Bártová, A., Brini, E., Dančíková, Z., Galdauskaitė, D., González, L., Hatzivarnava-Kazassi, E., Honkaniemi, H., Juárez, SP, Kaldager Hart, R., Kristiansen, I. L., Kurowska, A., Pall, K., Pertold-Gebicka, B., Rakar, T., Räsänen, T., Rentzou, K., Romero Balsas, P., Schmidt, E., Thil, L., Tuda, D., Vargha, L., Vignoli, D., Wagner, S. & Wrohlich, K. (2025). The European Parenting Leave Policies (EPLP) Dataset. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16564540
Contact
European Parenting Leave Policies (EPLP) Dataset
Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Postal address: Wiesingerstraße 4, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Office address: Dominikanerbastei 16, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Phone: +43 1 51581-7700
contact@eplp-dataset.org
eplp-dataset.org
