The role of the parental- leave program for Sweden's high rate of female labor-force participation and fertility

By analyzing Swedish women's use of parental leave this paper carries further the study of public policy contributions to Sweden's record high fertility and female labor force participation in the early 1990s. A piecewise constant proportional hazard model is used to analyze the 'risk' of exiting from parental leave among female mid­low level employees of the Swedish Telephone Company. Within a competing risks framework I study how factors such as cohort, education, monthly wage, working hours, in-company training and duration affect the 'risk' of exiting from leave to full-time or part-time work or continued unpaid leave. The data used have been extracted from the personnel files of the Swedish Telephone Company and include all female employees who had any parental leave in 1983.