The Parental Leave Benefit Dataset is a dataset within the Social Policy Indicators (SPIN) database, the latter with the aim of getting a better view of the ways in which countries have organized their welfare state by analysing institutions as manifested in social policy legislation. Indicators on parental leave benefits and related family policy programs are the central indicators of the PLB dataset. The main goal of this dataset is to offer improved ways to analyse the causes and consequences of family policy development. Moreover, it wants to offer indicators that are comparable with other indicators on social insurance programs in SPIN, in order to enable comparative and longitudinal research. The indicators allow multi-dimensional and institutional analyses on family policy legislation in three central areas of comparative welfare state research: 1) Descriptive analyses of the evolution of parental leave institutions; 2) Analyses of causes behind welfare state change; 3) Institutional analyses of potential outcomes of family policy legislation.

In this dataset, the benefit levels are calculated based on a model family with two children aged 0 and 5, where both parents have and had paid work two years prior to the birth of the second child, earning an average production worker’s wage.