The Government *Can* Make a Difference

This showed up in the comments last month, but the findings here are interesting enough that I should reiterate 'em: according to Reuters, 10 percent of the people taking advantage of the German subsidy for staying home with a newborn are men. That's up from 3.5 percent before the subsidy kicked in. And 20 percent of the guys are maxing out their time at home (12 months).

I can't put my fingers on the data, but it seems like other programs encouraging dads to stay home have had a rougher go of it (in Sweden, I believe, they had to launch a PR campaign to really get dads to take advantage of the great program there), so I'm encouraged by the strong start to the German program.

My only complaint: Reuters has this filed in the "Oddly Enough," category.