Details:
A mother or a father can receive parent’s money up to 12 months. Two
more months will be subsidised if the other partner demands parental
leave too. The government wants fathers to play a more active role in
child rearing. Before 2007, only 5 per cent of German fathers required
parental leave. Part-time work up to 30 hours is compatible with
parental leave. Students, apprentices or child minders may benefit from
the new payment even if they work longer. If the other parent asks for
the benefit in this two-months-time the payment depends of the net
income of this partner before the confinement.
Parental leave has to be seen
differently from paid maternity leave which generally starts six weeks
before the confinement and ends eight weeks after it. This payment will
be cleared with the paid parental leave. Parent’s money will neither be
taken into account up to the amount of 300 € with housing subsidy nor
does it touch claims to maintenance. In general parents have to demand
the parent’s money at their local youth welfare office. Until the end
of 2010, parent's money to the amount of 300 has not been considered as
income of people receiving welfare or unemployment money II. From 2011,
there will no longer be such a privilege for this group of people apart
one exception: if the beneficiary has worked before the confinement and
parent's money is a compensation for the loss of wage, parent's money
will not reduce welfare or unemployment money II to the amount of
maximal 300 €.
In addition to the parent's money, child
allowance is paid to all children under 18 years in Germany regardless
of the parent's income (from 2009 164 € for each of the first two
children, 170 € for the third child and 195 € for each subsequent
child).
The German government estimates the costs of paid
parental leave at 3.9 billion € in 2009 which is the time when the old
system will have expired. The government says that in 2007 it will pay
out 3.5 billion € and in 2008 4.4 billion €. Germany’s federal budget
will bear the costs.
The complement of the
paid parental leave is the
right of employees
to demand a time-out of their employment contract’s obligation to work.
Parents may demand a parental leave up to three years after the birth
of the child. This means that an employee may return to work after
three years at the same conditions but he or she won’t get a wage
during the leave. Employers have no chance to refuse the release. A
mother or a father intending to stay away from work after the birth has
to ask the employer at least seven weeks before the begin of the leave.
Under certain conditions an employer has the obligation to offer
half-time-work to the employee taking parental leave. In the time from
asserting the parental leave until its end an employee may not be
dismissed. If the employer wants to end the work-relationship at the
end of the parental leave he has to do so with a three months notice.
Experiences with the new system
In
the year 2009, there were nearly 157,000 cases where the father took
paid parental leave. Altogether, 665,126 babies were born in Germany in
that period. This means that 23.6 percent of fathers chose to have
parental leave. The number of women with parental leave is much more
higher, 96% of all mothers with babies born in 2009 benefited from
paid parental leave. Bavaria, Saxony and Berlin were the parts of
Germany with the highest participation of fathers (around 30%), the
Saarland (14%), North Rhine-Westphalia (18.1%) and Bremen (18.3%)
showed the lowest results. Most fathers (75%) decided to have this
downtime only for not more than two months.
On an average, fathers
got 1,171 € as paid parental leave benefit substituting the wage,
mothers 861 €, and with no distinction of gender, the average sum paid
as a compensation for the loss of income was 941 € (Source:Press release of the German Federal
Statistical Office nr. 195
2011-05-19).
Social Background
The
number of underage children in Germany has dropped from 15.2 million in
2000 to 13.1 million in 2010. It is expected that this decline
will continue. There are significant differences between the West and
the East of Germany. In the East, the number fell by nearly 29%, in the
West by 10% to eleven million children. Most children still live with
their married parents in a family (West: 79%, East: 58%). The amount of
children living with only a single parent is 15% in the West and 24% in
the East. 6% of the children in the West and 17% in the East live in
households where the parent lives with a partner and is not married.
For the majority of children living with both parents (51%) it is
normal that both parents work (at least part-time), 38% of such
children have only one working parent, and 11% have parents
who both do not work.
We can find day care places for 23% of the children under three years
on 1 March 2010, in 2006 the rate was only 14%. It is the intention of
the federal government to have 750,000 day care places in 2013 which
means that still 280,000 places have to be created.
For 33% of the children with a single parent social transfer payments
are the main income whereas for 92% of children with intact family
structures the labour income of the parents is the most important
financial basis.
The statistics say that in Germany children are not more endangered by
poverty than the average population. In 2008, 15.5% of the entire
population were endangered by poverty. The rate for children under 18
years was 15%. (Source:
press release of the German Federal Statistical Office nr. 285
2011-08-03).
In
Germany, the parents of approximately every third newborn child are not
married. The number has risen from 15% in 1990 to 33% in 2010. The
number increased significantly in the late 1990ies and has slowed in
the last years. But there is also an increase of marriages with common
premarital children from 8% in 1991 to 20% in 2010. Compared with other
European countries, the rate of newborn children whose parents are not
married is below the European average of nearly 38% in 2009. The
highest rate can be found in Estonia with 59%, the lowest in Greece
with 7%. Other countries: France 53%, United Kingdom 46%, Austria 39%,
Italy 24%. (Source:
press release of the German Federal Statistical Office nr. 294 2011-08-12).
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Changes
from 2011:
In autumn 2010 some changes to the law on parental leave have passed
the German parliament:
- Parents
with very high income will no longer get this benefit. This applies to
unmarried people with incomes more than 250,000 € or married couples
with more than 500,000 € a year.
- Parents with an income of more than 1,240 € per month
will only get a
support of 65 % of the last net income. The maximum amount of 1,800 €
will be kept.
- Paid parental leave benefits will be fully treated as
income that
reduces welfare or unemployment money II (= welfare for those who are
able to work). Exception: If parent's money is a compensation for the
loss of salary, maximal 300 € will not be taken into account.
| Fertility
rates of women in Europe in 2009 (according to EUROSTAT,
the statistical office of the European Union) |
| Country |
Rate |
| Austria |
1.38934 |
| Belgium |
1.83988 |
| Bulgaria |
1.56789 |
| Croatia |
1.49227 |
| Cyprus |
1.50885 |
| Czechia |
1.49239 |
| Denmark |
1.83868 |
| Estonia |
1.62218 |
| Finland |
1.86386 |
| France |
2.00208 |
| Germany |
1.35691 |
| Great
Britain and Northern Ireland |
1.93848 |
| Greece |
1.52200 |
| Hungary |
1.32118 |
| Iceland |
2.22808 |
| Ireland |
2.06776 |
| Italy
(2008) |
1.41612 |
| Latvia |
1.31120 |
| Lithuania |
1.54645 |
| Luxembourg |
1.58730 |
| Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia |
1.51876 |
| Malta |
1.43594 |
| Netherlands |
1.78933 |
| Norway |
1.97958 |
| Poland |
1.39757 |
| Portugal |
1.31848 |
| Romania |
1.37627 |
| Russia |
1.53743 |
| Serbia |
1.43581 |
| Slovakia |
1.41135
|
| Slovenia |
1.53305 |
| Spain |
1.39808 |
| Sweden |
1.93540 |
| Switzerland |
1.49640 |
In
2010, approximately 678,000 children were born in Germany, 13,000 more
than the year before. The fertility rate of women in Germany was 1,39
in 2010, 1.36 in 2009 and 1.38 in 2008. The rate is a little bit
higher in the East of Germany (1.46 compared to 1.39 in the West). (Source: press release of the German
Federal Statistical Office nr. 301
2011-08-18).
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| Average age of first time mothers: In Germany, the median age of mothers at the first childbirth was 28.8 years in 2009 (both married and not married mothers were included in this statistics).
Unmarried mothers gave birth to their first child earlier than
married mothers (27.3 years compared to 30.0 years). When compared
regionally, mothers with a first born child are younger in the East as
mothers in the West of Germany (East: 27.2, married mothers: 29.4 and
unmarried mothers 26.5 years; West: 29.1, married mothers 30.0 and
unmarried mothers 27.5 years). In 2009 in the East of Germany, 74% of
the first born children had parents who were not married. (Source:
press release of the German Federal Statistical Office nr. 442 2010-12-02). |
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