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CHILDREN

Bad economy takes toll on children’s pocket money

The global economic crisis is having a negative impact on German children, who have seen their allowances shrink this year, according to a new study published on Tuesday.

Published: 11 August 2009 15:11 CEST
Bad economy takes toll on children's pocket money
Photo: DPA

Children between six and 13-years-old saw their collective income sink by €600 million, or five percent, to €6.04 billion, comic book publisher Egmont Ehapa said in their annual kids’ consumer report.

The survey included children’s pocket money, cash earned for chores, gifts and savings.

In 2009, parents are expected to give their children €262 in allowance, down €17 from last year.

The new report showed a halt in what had been a trend toward higher income levels for children since 2000.

Egmont Ehapa polled 1,627 children and their parents in the representative study of the Germany’s 5.7 million children.

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POLITICS

Denmark’s finance minister to take ten weeks’ paternity leave

Denmark's Finance Minister, Nicolai Wammen, has announced that he will go on parental leave for ten weeks this summer, writing on Facebook that he was "looking forward to spending time with the little boy."

Published: 1 June 2023 11:04 CEST
Denmark's finance minister to take ten weeks' paternity leave

Wammen said he would be off work between June 5th and August 13th, with Morten Bødskov, the country’s business minister standing in for him in his absence.

“On June 5th I will go on parental leave with Frederik, and I am really looking forward to spending time with the little boy,” Wammen said in the post announcing his decision, alongside a photograph of himself together with his son, who was born in November.

Denmark’s government last March brought in a new law bringing in 11 weeks’ use-it-or-lose-it parental leave for each parent in the hope of encouraging more men to take longer parental leave. Wammen is taking 9 weeks and 6 days over the summer. 

The new law means that Denmark has met the deadline for complying with an EU directive requiring member states earmark nine weeks of statutory parental leave for fathers.

This is the second time Bødskov has substituted for Wammen, with the minister standing in for him as acting Minister of Taxation between December 2020 and February 2021. 

“My parental leave with Christian was quite simply one of the best decisions in my life and I’m looking forward to having the same experience with Frederik,” Wammen wrote on Facebook in November alongside a picture of him together with his son.

Male politicians in Denmark have tended to take considerably shorter periods of parental leave than their female colleagues. 

Minister of Employment and Minister for Equality Peter Hummelgaard went on parental leave for 8 weeks and 6 days in 2021. Mattias Tesfaye took one and a half months away from his position as Denmark’s immigration minister in 2020. Troels Lund Poulsen – now acting defence minister – took three weeks away from the parliament took look after his new child in 2020. Education minister Morten Østergaard took two weeks off in 2012. 

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