Suchergebnisse

In Europe, there has been an increasing emphasis on the equal rights of men and women to parental leave. Nordic countries such as Iceland are often seen as forerunners in the implementation of laws that promote gender equality by giving each parent non-transferable rights to parental leave. In October 2008, the Icelandic banking system collapsed and a severe economic recession followed. This can be seen as a natural experimental intervention and provides a unique opportunity to study potential changes in fathers' use of parental leave in response to drastic economic changes and resulting policy changes. Our data show that during the years 2003–2007, a time of economic prosperity, Icelandic fathers on average used 3 full months of parental leave. After this event, fathers' use of parental leave declined, while the reverse could be seen for mothers who progressively took a longer leave with partial pay. Our analysis suggests that a decline in fathers' use of parental leave can be traced back to the dramatic collapse of the economic system and the subsequent substantial lowering of the maximum payment during parental leave. The most dramatic changes were seen for fathers in high-income groups whose payments during parental leave were most severely cut. The data suggest that after the economic collapse and resulting policy changes, women have become increasingly responsible and men decreasingly responsible for childcare duties – an alarming trend from the standpoint of gender equality. Possible remedies and courses of action are discussed.

Retirement possibilities in nineteenth-century Iceland were largely restricted to residing within the household of an offspring. Using evidence extracted from the national census of 1901 we attempt to evaluate the importance which the availability of offspring played the household position of elderly married women and widows. The results indicate that women who were forced to give up headship without the possibility of retirement within the household of an offspring had on average fewer children alive than those who managed to exchange headship for residence within the home of a married child. However, married women tended to retain headship long past the age of 60, whereas the loss of a spouse usually resulted in changes in household position. We find that there existed a closer correlation between the number of surviving children and the household position of widows than was the case as regards married women.

ABSTRACTThis article summarizes aspects of the decline in infant mortality in the five Nordic countries. During the nineteenth century, both the levels of infant mortality and its development differed among the Nordic countries. At an early date, Denmark, Norway and Sweden stood out as the countries with the lowest levels in Europe whereas levels of infant mortality in Iceland and Finland were comparatively high. Within the countries there were large regional differences that often crossed national borders. Artificial feeding characterized most of the areas with the highest infant mortality. Within the different countries the high infant mortality came to be seen as a problem during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The spread of information, midwives as agents of change and high literacy are factors that have been proven important in explaining the subsequent decline.