Scandinavian countries like Finland are well-known for their high standards of living. These countries top most development indicators and are usually shown up as a model for progressive governance.
However, one aspect wherein they do suffer is in fertility rates. Finland had a fertility rate of just 1.6 babies per woman in 2016—less than what is required to naturally maintain the population. In 2016, Finland’s population increased by just 7,568 people, largely on account of migration.
One way to possibly address this situation it by improving the employee benefits for those who have children. Finland already had some of the highest provisions for maternal and parental leave in the world.
Now, the newly elected government of Sanna Marin, the world’s youngest leader of a country, is set to make maternal and paternal leave the same—seven months each for the mother and father of a newborn child.
New parents will be able to avail a total of 14 months from next year when the policy kicks in (expected from September 2021). Single parents will be able to use both allowances.
Earlier, maternal leave was set at 4.2 months while paternal leave was 2.2 months (with the option to share six months between the mother and father).
The earlier policy had not incentivised fathers to take leave, however, as only one in four fathers were estimated to have taken this leave under it.
The move comes ahead of a 2019 directive by the EU, which asked member states to give offer each parent at least four months of leave including two months that cannot be transferred. The EU directive 2019/1158 gave member states three years to enact the new legislation. Interestingly, the legislation noted that only ten per cent of fathers in the EU currently took advantage of parental leave.
A press release issued by the government stated, “The reform is an opportunity to build a family leave scheme in line with today's family concept. Even in terms of wording, obsolete legislation will be brought to a modern level and its language will become gender-neutral and suitable for all families. For example, the reform would give up gender-tied daily allowances. Instead, both parents would receive an equal number of daily allowance days and equal flexibility in their use.”
It added that the increase in the number of leaves would result in the cost of the daily allowance scheme going up by €100 million.
According to Reuters, the minister of health and social affairs, Aino-Kaisa Pekonen, said that the reforms would improve gender equality and boost the declining birth rate.
