1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«This article analyzes the extent of access to leave benefits by social class, using family income as a marker for class. Our goal is to bring consideration of household inclusion and exclusion into the literature on parental leave.» (p. 544)

Questions/Hypothèses :
«We ask the following questions: Do Canadian parents in Québec and the rest of Canada have equal access to government-sponsored parental leave benefits (maternity, paternity, and parental leave)? If not, what does this reveal about the extent of class differences? What difference has the province’s exit from the federal program made for families in Québec? Finally, what are the implications for practices and theories of social reproduction?» (p. 544)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«Our study is limited to the population captured in the Employment Insurance Coverage Survey (EICS), an annual national survey conducted by Statistics Canada on behalf of the department that manages the EI [Employment Insurance] program, Economic and Social Development Canada. […] The survey is administered to a sub-sample of respondents of the Labour Force Survey four times a year and asks respondents about their situation during the reference week in the month prior to being interviewed. The total sample size is on average 11,000 respondents, composed of unemployed individuals and others who, given their recent status in the labour market, could potentially be eligible for EI.» (p. 548)

Instruments :
Questionnaire

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

Results showed that «patterns of inequality occur both by program and by income, but to different extents, which points to program design – especially eligibility criteria – as a key explanation for differences in receipt of parental leave benefits. We showed that more families are parental-leave rich in Québec than in Canada: in 2013, 35.7% of women in the nine provinces did not receive maternity and/or parental leave benefits, whereas that proportion was only 10.7% in Québec. […] We also showed that household income matters to receipt of parental leave benefits. Québec dramatically improved the number of mothers in lower-income families in receipt of benefits compared to the other provinces (by 41.8 percentage points in 2013) and reduced the disparity in receiving benefits between mothers in low- and high-income households. […] We thus point out a growing divide between Québec and the ROC [rest of Canada], and between households with different incomes, in terms of parental leave benefits in the first year of an infant’s life. The implication is that where parents live in Canada, and how much they earn, matters to whether and how social reproduction is supported.» (p. 557)