PAID LEAVE POLICIES AND PARENTAL LEAVE CHOICES IN LITHUANIA

This paper focuses on paid leave policies and parents parental leave choices in Lithuania. Lithuanian paid parental leave system provides one of the longest leaves in Europe, with high replacement rates, but there is a lack of more flexible working arrangements for working parents. For an empirical analysis an administrative data of SODRA (State Social Insurance Fund Board), which includes information of all benefits recipients was used. SODRA data allowed to disclose the gender differences in the parent’s parental leave choices by gender (2011–2018). This period has been chosen because Lithuania in 2011 introduced new paid leave policy regulation, when two parental leave options were offered for parents: 100% of net earnings until the child is 12 months or 70% of net earnings until the child is 12 months, and 40% net earnings until the child is 24 months. The SODRA data had shown that although the share of fathers who take paid parental leave had increased since 2011 but in comparison to women it constituted only about 24% of all f paid parental benefits recipients. Considerably larger part of the fathers is choosing to receive the parental leave benefits the second year while they are eligible to work and benefit is not reduced.