Although designed to promote gender equality, parental leave policies in the UK have yet to close the gap in uptake, with women taking significantly more leave than men.

Authors Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg, Dr Alistair Hunt and James Bailey recommend reforming the UK’s current parental leave policies to enable better uptake of leave entitlement by fathers, in turn leading to greater sharing of childcare responsibilities between fathers and mothers, and a stronger attachment to the labour market among mothers.

In the report Costs and benefits of improved paternity leave: too good to ignore, they presented a cost-benefit analysis of one specific policy proposal – an expansion of paternity leave for employed fathers from two to six weeks, at a rate of pay close to salary replacement level.

In this companion piece, they take this proposal further by assessing the costs and benefits, and thus the social net benefit, of introducing a new entitlement for self-employed and worker fathers, who are currently ineligible for any support. They propose the introduction of Paternity Allowance – a six-week entitlement paid at the current Statutory Paternity Pay rate and mirroring in spirit the Maternity Allowance already available to mothers in similar position on the labour market.