Social Security increases the cost of maternity and paternity benefits
Bringing children to this world is something necessary to ensure the future of society. Without new children to become adults, the years to come are nonsense. But decide to be parents it's not easyAlthough it is a wonderful experience, the expense of keeping a child throughout its development can not be ignored.
For this reason, the public authorities offer several help to families so that they can afford to pay for a baby. And it seems that it has taken good note of the importance of these benefits. That is why Social Security has increased this expense in recent years so that parents can take care of their children more effectively.
1,393.5 million expense
The data of the Social Security they amount to 1,393.5 million euros to cover these aids. Data that are divided into maternity benefits, 1,106.7 million, and paternity, 286.8 million. These amounts were invested between January and September 2017. These numbers reflect the increase in these assistance with respect to previous years.
In particular, the increase has been 85,9%. The increase is due to the entry into force of the paternity leave that Social Security launched last January, which allows men to spend 4 weeks caring for their newborn children.
In total, the Social Security figures show that they attended 200,618 economic benefits for the care of children until September. Of all these aids, 196,879, correspond to permits enjoyed by the mother and 3,739 to maternity leave, enjoyed by the father.
In response to the aid enjoyed by the parents, the number of paternity grants between January and September 2017 was 196,873. Since January 1, 2017, paternity leave has been extended to four weeks. The largest number of these permits for men were observed in Catalonia, 37,257, followed by Madrid (33,523), Andalusia (31,458), the Valencian Community (19,495) and the Basque Country (10,339).
Increase in permits
This is the current situation of aids to motherhood and fatherhood. For the future there are several proposals, such as the idea of Platform for Equal and Untransferable Permits of Birth and Adoption, PPiiNA, is that within five years the paternity and maternity leave will be extended until the nine months between the two. That is to say, the objective is not other than adding the time that the Law leaves to the parents and the one that is granted to the mothers, the three trimesters are reached so that the care of the babies is greater than the one that the legislation allows to day of today.
Currently, the Law Allows parents about two weeks as paternity leave and maternity leave is 16 weeks for mothers. PPiiNA meanwhile propose that in a first step with their proposal the parents' permission is extended until six weeks, that is, a month and a half non-transferable. After one year, this time would increase in another two weeks and after five years the 16 weeks were reached as well as the mothers.
The implementation of this proposal to extend paternity leave would imply an increase in state investment throughout the six years until reaching 1,400 million euros. All with the purpose of implementing the increase of parental permission that like other rights such as holidays or unemployment should be "personal" and non-transferable.
Damián Montero
