Last year almost 1.4 million women and 482,000 men in Germany received parental allowance. The so-called fathers’ share rose to 26.1 percent, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office.
The steady increase in men receiving parental allowance has continued: in 2015 it was still 20.9 percent, in 2021 the father’s share of parental allowance was 25.3 percent.
As in the previous year, Saxony was the front runner in a comparison of the federal states in terms of the proportion of fathers receiving parental allowance. As in 2021, it was 30.2 percent, followed by Thuringia with 28.4 percent and Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, each with 28.3 percent of fathers. The lowest proportion of fathers in 2022 – also like in the previous year – was in Saarland at 20.8 percent.
However, there were clear differences between men and women when it came to the length of time they received parental allowance: while women received parental allowance for an average of 14.6 months in 2022, as in the previous year, the average time men wanted was just 3.6 months. That was even a little less than in previous years: in the years 2019 to 2021 fathers had received parental allowance for an average of 3.7 months.
