Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the public release of the European Parenting Leave Policies (EPLP) Dataset, a new harmonised dataset covering reforms in maternity, co-parent (e.g. daddy month), paid parental, and job-protected leave regulations in 21 European countries from 1970 to 2024.

The dataset provides 33 variables capturing leave duration, benefits, flexibility in leave use, incentives for sharing leave between parents, and job protection. It is designed to support quantitative analyses of long-term policy trends, cross-national differences, and the effects of major reforms.

The dataset, documentation, and full codebook are freely available at: https://eplp-dataset.org

The EPLP Dataset was developed at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. We hope the dataset will be useful for your research, teaching, and policy work.

If you have questions or feedback, you can reach us at contact@eplp-dataset.org.

Best wishes,
Sonja Spitzer (on behalf of the project team)

Sonja Spitzer, PhD
Vienna Institute of Demography

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Postsparkasse, Dominikanerbastei 16, Vienna, Austria
T: +43 1 51581 7753 | E: sonja.spitzer@oeaw.ac.at