Are those 400+ days per parent or divvied up between the parents? I imagine that can have a big impact on how the leave affects companies.

480 days together. Of those, 90 days each are non-transferrable (between the parents).

Wow. I would almost never work. I'm having my 12th kid soon, and my wife doesn't work. At 390 days (roughly 13 months) per kid, I could pretty much just not work.

Why don't people do this in Sweden? There are so few kids!

Having kids is expensive (even when health care and education is free, they eat and wear clothes and play sports and stuff!). People also want to work and not just raise kids, I think. I don't know of anyone with half that many kids.

I think the Swedish culture is also very practically minded. (Romance is dead!) Which means the practical drawbacks from having a big family (car size, expensive vacations etc) will weigh a lot.

People want to work, and do other things that work avails to them, including provide better experiences and lifestyle for the smaller number of children in their household.

Even in the 1960s in the US, when the working class had much more economic security, and it was easier to financially support children than today, the median number of children per family was still < 3.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/718084/average-number-of...

I think "better experiences" should include the value of siblings. There is always somebody to play with. You form a team against bullies. Being able to attend classes together or share dorm rooms is great. Even later in life, there will be family to share life with.

3 kids would be able to provide each other plenty of sibling value.

Most people won't have as many children as you though. Even among people for whom having a family is a priority, they probably won't have more than two or three.

It’s per child, with a percentage ear marked for each parent and the rest is up to the parent to decide to gets them.

People aren't easily replaceable...especially high talent individuals. It's also a big burden for an organization to pay for non-productive workers. And if someone has several children in a row...then what? What are the limits?

Its paid by the government, funded by taxes, at the same level as sick leave/disability. Some (most) companies actually chip in a little (or a lot) to ease the income loss as a perk.

> It's also a big burden for an organization to pay for non-productive workers

That's absolutely true, but hopefully the government (or social security) pays for it. Same as for medical leave (in Slovenia, only after 30 days though - first month is paid by the employer). That way, the government is supporting entrepreneurship and small businesses, which would otherwise be disproportionally affected by a single person leaving (in a big company, the law of large numbers makes it easy to predict, and therefore manage, absences).

This would make more sense if the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wasn't also notorious for having extremely high turnover.

Are you implying that someone will try to game the system by perpetually having children for a decade or more?

Could someone from Sweden talk about how a year or more ofleave works in practice?

I am curious about:

* what percentage of parents take the full year or more of leave?

* how much of a salary reduction happens on leave?

* how much of the leave salary is paid directly by the employer versus by the government?

* does the year have to be taken consecutively, or can you break it up into chunks?

* what happens to the temporary employee once the parent is back from leave?

* if the parent has another child while on leave, can they extend leave by another year?

The Gates Foundation did not have to research it, they experienced it.

You got my smile ;). Also in Germany its no problem since all we do is sausages.

Wonder why a burger so different that the person making it cannot be on parental leave for a year.

The burger has many more layers. It's significantly more complex. As someone who spent some time working in Germany, my coworkers were obsessed with hamburgers. And mayo on everything.

While in the US it is a big deal, or what?