Real-Life Math
You're a research psychologist at a large university. You perform
research and publish your findings in scholarly journals. Although your main
area of study is child development, you've been concentrating on social issues
involving child welfare -- child care, early childhood intervention services
and parental leave in the event of birth or adoption.
A local Congressman
wants help in his quest to get paid maternity leave passed into law. One way
you can help is to provide some data regarding the ways in which other countries
handle parental leave.
You come across a table comparing the lengths
of time and funding of parental leaves in Sweden and Germany.
Sweden's
system is the most generous, with 90 percent of a person's salary reimbursed
for the first 9 months of the child's life, plus $150 a month for the next
3 months. The mother gets a one-year maternity leave.
New parents in
Germany are paid 100 percent of their regular salary for the first 3 months
of the child's life, and then $285 a month for the next 4 months. After that,
they return to work at full salary.
You want to find out how these
systems would translate into a real person's income in the U.S. Would such
arrangements make it feasible for a new parent to stay home with his or her
baby for the first year of the child's life?
Imagine a new mother who
earns $27,000 a year as a librarian. How much would she be paid during her
one-year maternity leave in Sweden? How much would she earn over the course
of her child's first year if she was in Germany?