Costs and benefits of improved leave for fathers in the first year: Too good to ignore

Although designed to promote gender equality, parental leave policies in the UK have yet to close the gap in uptake, with women taking significantly more leave than men.1 For example, in the UK, paternity leave is short and poorly compensated and Shared Parental Leave (SPL) has failed to deliver for working parents, with no significant effect on average take-up or length of leave taken by working fathers. This is due to eligibility criteria, poor level of compensation whilst on leave and procedural complexity, making it inaccessible for many working families.2 By contrast, non-transferable paternal leave entitlements have been widely implemented across Europe, following the 2010 and 2019 EU directives,3 and similarly across Canada, Singapore and Japan.

We recommend reforming the UK’s current parental leave policies to enable better uptake of leave entitlement by fathers, in turn leading to greater sharing of childcare responsibilities between fathers and mothers, and a stronger attachment to the labour market among mothers. 1 Farré, L., 2016. Parental Leave Policies and Gender Equality: A Survey of the Literature. Estudios de economía aplicada, 34(1), pp.45–60. 2 Clifton-Sprigg, J., Fichera, E., Kaya, E. and Jones, M. (2025). Fathers taking leave: evaluating the impact of shared parental leave in the United Kingdom. Fiscal Studies, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.70000 3 European Union, 2010. Council Directive 2010/18/EU of 8 March 2010 on the framework for the activities of the member states in the field of parental leave. Official Journal of the European Union, L68, pp.13-19. Later repealed by Directive (EU) 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on work-life balance for parents and carers.

We consider one specific policy change – an expansion of paternity leave from two to six weeks, to be taken flexibly over the first year of a child’s life. Within this proposal, we analyse four different policy-pay configurations – compensation for fathers at 90 per cent of the average weekly earnings (AWE), with or without a cap, at the National Living Wage (NLW), and at the current Statutory Paternity Pay (SPP) rate. For each policy-pay configuration we obtain three different net benefit figures to reflect the fact that take-up of these policies is unknown and based on assumptions we make. Our Central estimate reflects the most likely take up behaviour, but we also present much more conservative Low and much more optimistic High estimates.

Based on this analysis we argue that ‘six weeks for fathers, paid at 90 per cent average weekly earnings’ – an expansion of the current paternity leave, to be taken flexibly across the first year – would be a good first step in changing the current landscape.