Paid Parental Leave and Women Labor force Participation : The case of Sweden

Abstract: Our paper analyzes how paid parental leave schemes affect female labor force participation in Sweden. We examine this question on municipality level from 2003 to 2019. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a policy reform made in 2016 and analyze how it mainly affects women and their participation rate. It contributes to the fields of economics but also has a sociological aspect. We expect the policy reform to increase the share of parental leave days taken out by men, decrease the women's share, and increase female labor force participation. The empirical results do not show statistically significant evidence that the reform in 2016 increased or decreased women's participation rate. However, the share of net days taken out by men rises, and the share of female net days falls.