Parental Leave Policies and Second Births: A Comparison of Czechia and Slovakia

The paper investigates the transition to second births in Czechia and Slovakia in the context of the development of parental leave policies since the beginning of the 1990s. We focus on two countries that share many similarities in terms of their economic, cultural and institutional settings but differ in their parental leave policies. We analyse to what extent the significant changes introduced to the parental leave system, particularly in Czechia, have influenced second-birth timing in two low-fertility countries that are experiencing a shift to the late childbearing pattern. Using data from the Czech Statistical Office and the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, we employ the parity-cohort method and use duration-specific second-birth rates and the second-birth progression ratio to investigate changes in the spacing and quantum of second births for women who had their first child between 1992 and 2013. The results show that for an increasing proportion of mothers in Czechia, the option to claim higher parental benefits for shorter periods of leave contributed to the shortening of the birth interval between their first and second children. No such changes in birth intervals were detected in Slovakia, where no important changes regarding the flexibility or amount of the parental benefit were introduced. The difference in the development of second-birth rates between the two countries was also reflected in a growing difference in the share of mothers having two children within 10 years of the first birth.