OFPP

The Open Family Policy Platform is a space where researchers can interact with the Open Family Policy Program (OFPP) and the OFPP Contextual Database. The OFPP is a collection of coded family policy legislation. It currently covers maternity, paternity and parental leave policies in 28 European countries between the years 2010 and 2020.

Why OFPP?

I created the OFPP in response to the lack of accessible and flexible family policy data that would allow researchers to estimate family policy entitlements with greater accuracy. One of the limitations of contemporary (family) policy research is the insufficient knowledge we have about who is eligible for policy support and how policy entitlements vary within and across populations. This is particularly problematic in cross-national comparative research. The limited variation in cross-national data does not allow us to study the impact of policies on people’s lives in sufficient detail. The OFPP addresses these issues through its coded family policies, which in combination with survey data identify respondents who are eligible for family policies and estimate the size of their entitlements.

What does the OFPP do?

The OFPP was designed to be used with the EU-SILC data. The OFPP identifies survey respondents who are eligible for maternity, paternity and parental leave policies. It also estimates the amount of cash benefits the respondents are entitled to, and for how long they can draw these benefits.

The OFPP can be used in numerous ways. It is a useful tool for estimating variation in leave entitlements within and across countries. It also allows us to focus on specific groups (e.g. single mothers, young adults, etc.) and compare their entitlements across countries. Moreover, the data can be used in the estimation of the association between policy entitlements and various outcomes such as employment or fertility.

The OFPP also allows to produce aggregated indicators such as the percentage of the population eligible for individual policies, or benefit replacement rates that account for minimum and maximum benefit payments.

How does the OFPP work?

The OFPP is based on several core assumptions about the population that is subjected to the leave policies (population assumptions) and about the way these policies are used (policy assumptions).

The OFPP is basing its estimates on hypothetical parents. These are respondents of childbearing age. All respondents of childbearing age are seen by the OFPP as people at risk of having a biological child. However, the childbearing age is different for women and men. Whilst women are limited by their biological ability to produce children, this is not the case for men. The OFPP, therefore, applies different criteria for determining the childbearing age of women and men. Women of childbearing age are all respondents between the age of 16 and 45. The OFPP identifies as men of childbearing age any male respondents who cohabit with their female partner who is between 16 and 45 years old. For single men, the childbearing age is determined to be 16-45 years.

The policy assumptions that the OFPP works with are more complex. They are mainly determined by the data availability and cover topics such as the qualifying periods for eligibility, transferability of entitlements, flexibility in use and much more. Detailed information about the policy assumptions can be found in the Methodology Report.

The OFPP is open and flexible

The OFPP is written in Stata and is distributed as an open source code under the GNU General Public License. Although it was designed for use with EU-SILC data, it can be modified for use with any other survey data. The core assumptions can be also adjusted to better fit specific research questions.

It is possible to directly participate in the development of the OFPP.

OFPP Contextual Database

The OFPP Contextual Database contains macro-level data that are meant to provide additional context for the OFPP. The Contextual Database also quantifies family policy designs that cannot be captured through the OFPP. It currently contains data on leave flexibility, early childcare education and care (ECEC) services, and the labour market. More information about the Contextual Database can be found in the Codebook.

Data Sources

The coding of the OFPP is based on two main sources of legislative data. The primary source of data is the Comparative Tables produced by the Mutual Information System on Social Protection (MISSOC). The other crucial source of legislative data is the Annual Reviews produced by the International Network on Parental Leave Policies & Research (LP&R).

Funding

The OFPP is an output of a research project “Family Policy Measurement Tool: Advanced Methodologies for Understanding Inequalities in Family Policy”. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) under grant agreement No 893008. The research was conducted at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO) at KU Leuven.