Press release No. 212 of 21 June 2016
WIESBADEN – For more than one in three children (34.2%) born in Germany in 2014, not only mothers, but also fathers received parental allowance. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that the participation rate of fathers, as it is called, increased by 2.2 percentage points compared with a year earlier. Since parental allowance was introduced, the number of fathers receiving that benefit has continuously increased. Fathers were recipients of parental allowance for one in five children born in 2008 (20.8%), while the ratio was one in four for children born in 2010 (25.3%). By contrast, the participation rate of mothers was 96% in 2014. On the whole, 933,000 mothers and fathers received parental allowance for their children born in 2014.