Fathers’ Time-Use while on Paternity Leave: Childcare or Leisure?

We study fathers’ time-use during paternity leave by combining evidence on downstream labor-market outcomes with direct behavioral responses to a major sporting event. Using administrative data from Spain, which offers generous and non-transferable paternity leave, we first examine the impact of paternity leave extensions on parents’ relative earnings trajectories. We find no measurable effect of paternity leave extensions on the child penalty. While several mechanisms could explain this null result, it is consistent with the possibility that a nontrivial share of fathers may not use paternity leave primarily for childcare. We then provide direct evidence on fathers’ behavior by exploiting the precise timing of the 2022 Soccer World Cup, a large sports event with a strong male following. Our data cover the universe of paternity (and maternity) leave spells, allowing us to implement a difference-in-differences design using the World Cup dates (November 20-December 18, 2022) and surrounding periods, as well as the previous and subsequent years, to account for seasonality. We document a daily excess of more than 1,000 fathers (1.3%) on paternity leave during the exact dates of the tournament. Triple-differences analyses show that this pattern does not appear for maternity leave spells or for paternity leave among self-employed workers (with more flexible schedules). We interpret these results as direct evidence that (at least a fraction of) fathers use paternity leave for purposes unrelated to childcare. JEL codes: J13, J16, J22