| Note: Responding to your post addressing my response to the claims I was curious about. For some reason I can’t respond to that comment directly. I’m not making the claim that all parents can have 1 parent stay home or that there is no risk to a career for doing so, or that everyone has extended family that can help. I was only trying to counter the claim by the other commenter that daycare at 3 months was the only option. Overall, there is not going to be a perfect situation where you can mitigate the risk of losing your job, still get paid a high percentage of your salary, and be at home. But, there are high costs associated with the Swedish model as well as risk. Some are explicit, like the higher tax rates. Others costs and risks might be less so. For example, maybe there are less higher paying career opportunities in Sweden because of the high risk to employers that they have to guarantee employment for new parents for a significantly long period of time. Or consider that people that don’t want to be parents will have to subsidize parents, both directly though taxes and most likely through picking up the slack of the parent on leave. I asked my original question about any studies or models about net income in the US vs Sweden after childcare costs because I want to know to what extent a US household could replicate the benefits of the Swedish system with their extra income, if any. If you have an extra 100k after 10 years of working life when compared to Sweden, you can “pay yourself” 50k for a year while you don’t work and have at least a few years of daycare expenses saved up. Now, I genuinely don’t know whether that is close to reality, which is why I want the data. |