Effects of Changes in the Parental Leave Benefits in 2022

This study estimates the effect of increasing the income replacement rate in parental leave benefits on the use of parantal leave exploiting the institutional changes in 2022. This paper uses the nonlinear and linear difference-in-difference methods. The estimation results show that the increase in the amount of parental leave benefits increased the use rate of parental leave by 4.3% and 6.4% in 2022 and 2023. The effect of the increase in benefits in 2024, the third year, was not statistically significant. Also, the estimation results show that the effect was small or insignificant at the age of 0-1, while the benefits had a relatively large effect on the women with children aged 2 to 5.