Family Policy Knowledge across the Life Course

Alzbeta Bartova , KU Leuven

People’s knowledge of social support programmes and their entitlements has for long been identified in the literature as one of the main determinants of benefit take-up. Despite that, the empirical evidence that would describe and analyse the degree of awareness in the general population is rather scarce. In this research, I am interested whether and how people develop their knowledge of family policies. Does their awareness increase as they age and transition to a stable relationship, or when they start planning a family? Or does it only increase when expecting a child, or even following childbirth? Are women more aware of family policies and their entitlements compare to men? Does awareness differ by socio-economic status? I use data from the module “Family Policy Awareness” fielded in the Netherlands as a part of the LISS Panel in 2021. The sample was limited to all women and men who were between 20 and 40 years old at the time of the data collection. The policies in question are maternity, paternity and parental leave, childcare allowance and child benefits. The preliminary results suggest that although the family policy knowledge increases with life course transitions, it remains relatively low across the observed population including among parents. There also appear to be a considerable differences in the knowledge of individual policies. The respondents were most familiar with child benefits and childcare allowance but least with leave policies.

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 Presented in Session 119. Flash session Policy Development and Measurement