Sweden Pays Grandparents to Care for Grandkids
Sweden has launched a new law that allows grandparents to get paid parental leave while taking care of their grandchildren for up to three months of a child's first year.
This comes 50 years after the Scandinavian country became the first in the world to introduce paid parental leave for fathers and not just mothers.
Under the law, parents can transfer some of their parental leave allowance to the child's grandparents. A couple can transfer a maximum of 45 days to others while a single parent can transfer 90 days.
Alexandra Wallin of Sweden's Social Insurance Agency told Swedish TV that the new law will "give greater opportunities."
In Sweden, you are allowed to be fully off work when your child is born. Parental benefit is paid out for 480 days, or about 16 months, per child. Of those, the compensation for 390 days is calculated based on a person's full income, while for the remaining 90 days, people get a fixed amount of about $17 per day.
In 1974, Sweden replaced gender-specific maternity leave with parental leave for both parents. At the time, the so-called parental insurance allowed parents to take six months off work per child — with each parent able to take half of the days.
However, after that move, only 0.5% of the paid parental leave was taken by fathers, according to the Social Insurance Agency. Today, fathers in Sweden take around 30% of the paid parental leave, the agency said.
By contrast, the United States is one of only a handful of countries — and the only industrialized one — that does not have a national paid maternity leave policy. Thirteen states and Washington D.C. have paid leave programs, but only offer about three months of leave.
"Examples like Sweden show just how far behind the United States is, " said Jared Make of nonprofit advocacy organization A Better Balance.
