Despite the expansion of family policies in East Asia, gendered patterns of childcare remain persistent. Incorporating the capability approach into the intra-household bargaining model, this study reinterprets observed patterns of parental leave-taking among Taiwanese couples. Using dyadic data from the Kids in Taiwan Survey and estimating a bivariate probit model, the analysis explores how relative resources and conversion factors are associated with these outcomes. The findings indicate that mothers’ relative advantages in working time are associated with a higher likelihood of departing from default maternal caregiving, whereas fathers’ advantages in occupational status are associated with lower predicted probabilities of taking leave, which may be consistent with the constrained scope of paternal participation. Among highly educated couples, mothers’ perception of access to high-quality, subsidized babysitting services is associated with greater room for manoeuvre on childcare arrangements. Taken together, these associations have important implications, through a capability-informed lens, for policies promoting gender equality in childcare: policymakers may need to move beyond expanding leave entitlements to trying to improve the bargaining conditions under which families negotiate childcare arrangements.
Lin et al. (Tue,) studied this question.