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Temporary parental leave insurance
Temporary parental benefit is available for all parents who need to stay
at home from work to take care of a sick child aged less than 12 years.
6
Temporary parental benefit can also be received if the person who usually
looks after the child is ill or when the parent needs to take the child to a
doctor or a dentist. The benefit can be paid out for whole days or a fraction
of a day if the parent has not been absent from work the whole day. The
benefit can be paid out a maximum of 120 days
7
per year and child without
any waiting period. After seven days in every benefit spell a medical
certificate on the child’s illness is required. However, most benefit spells
are short, usually only one or two days. In 2012, the parents who used the
benefit claimed on average 7.2 gross benefit days per year. About 46 per
cent of the parents who were likely to be entitled to the benefit if their child
was ill actually claimed any benefit (53 per cent of the mothers and 38 per
cent of the fathers).
The temporary parental benefit compensates 77.6 per cent of the foregone
earnings up to a monthly wage of SEK 27,750 (EUR 3,011) in 2014. In
2011, approximately 62 per cent of the fathers and 27 per cent of the
mothers eligible to the benefit had an income exceeding the benefit cap.
The benefit cannot be received if the parent is receiving sick-pay or other
social insurance benefits, e.g., unemployment benefits or parental benefits.
The parent needs to notify the SSIA on the first absence day in order to
use the benefit. The parent can then later on apply for the benefit. The
SSIA checks the information the parent provides when applying for the
benefit. All applications are automatically checked against the information
previously registered at the SSIA, for example parent’s income and
whether the parent is receiving any other social insurance benefits. The
SSIA also exchanges information with other authorities and matches data
from, among others, the National Board of Student Aid, the unemployment
funds and the Swedish Tax Agency in order to detect cases of benefit fraud.
Since 2006 the SSIA has carried out controls that the parent has not
worked and that the child has been absent from the day care or school
during the benefit period. Between July 2008 and December 2012 the
child’s absence was monitored with an absence certificate that the day care
or school had to sign before the parent sent the certificate to the SSIA. The
6
In some cases it is also possible to receive temporary parental benefit for children
older than 12 years. Special rules also apply for children under the age of 8
months.
7
However, unlimited number of benefit days can be paid out if the child is seriously
ill. In those cases, a doctor’s certificate is required from the first benefit day. The
benefit spells for children who are seriously ill are excluded from the analysis in this
study.