Will you qualify for paid parental leave after you move? Five cities, five clocks, and SEK 519,801 riding on one of them
By Skyler Bissell · September 20, 2026 · 11 min read
A single earner on SEK 1,425,000 in Stockholm has a statutory parental leave package worth SEK 519,801, and the first 180 days of it pay at that rate only if the parent was on the Swedish labour market by the 240th day before the birth. Arrive with a due date seven months out and the same parent gets a flat SEK 250 a day for those 180 days instead. The same move to Amsterdam costs nothing, because the Netherlands has no waiting period at all. Whether a relocation and a birth can share a year is a question five countries answer five different ways, and none of the agency pages says so in one place.
This is that place. For Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Stockholm and Oslo: the rule a new arrival has to meet, the clock it runs on, what you get if you miss it, and what the full entitlement is worth so that the stake is a number and not a mood. The value column is our engine's leave figure for one single earner on USD 150,000, the same basis as is maternity leave full pay; the rules are the statutes and agency pages linked at the foot.
If you arrive six months before the due date, as an employee: Amsterdam pays in full. Berlin pays Elterngeld on the German months of income, with a EUR 300 floor, and the maternity weeks in full. London pays no statutory maternity pay, because that needs 26 weeks with the same employer by the fifteenth week before the birth, and the Maternity Allowance depends on 26 weeks of employment in the 66 weeks before the due date. Stockholm pays the flat SEK 250 a day for the first 180 days and the full rate after. Oslo pays nothing from NAV for that birth, since the six-of-ten-months test is missed and the lump-sum fallback has its own twelve-month membership test.
TL;DR
- Two of the five cities have no waiting period and three run clocks of 41 weeks, 240 days and 10 months, counted from different dates. The five rules.
- Inside the EU the months you worked before moving count toward every clock; from the United States they count toward none. Two kinds of mover.
- The Norwegian fallback is the one that surprises people: NOK 772,027 at the full rate, and for a recent arrival nothing at all. Why.
The five rules, the clocks and the fallbacks
| City | The rule for the full benefit | The clock | If you miss it | Full entitlement at stake, USD 150,000 earner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | Be an employee (werknemer) when the leave starts; the Wet arbeid en zorg sets no minimum service for pregnancy leave, partner leave or paid parental leave | None | Nothing to miss; the benefit is 100% of daily pay up to UWV's maximum daily wage of EUR 309.91 | €44,784 ($51,893) |
| Berlin | Elterngeld: live in Germany, care for the child, work at most part time; no employment or contribution history. Non-EU parents need a permit that allows work for at least six months. Maternity pay: be a member of statutory health insurance when the protection period starts | None for entitlement; the amount uses the 12 months of income before the birth, and only German or other EU-taxed months count | A partial income year lowers the monthly Elterngeld toward its EUR 300 floor; the ceiling is EUR 1,800 a month | €57,015 ($66,066) |
| London | Statutory Maternity Pay and Statutory Paternity Pay: 26 weeks of continuous employment with the same employer running into the qualifying week, and average earnings of at least GBP 129 a week | The qualifying week is the 15th before the expected week of childbirth, so the job must have started about 41 weeks before the due date | Maternity Allowance from the DWP: GBP 194.32 a week for up to 39 weeks, if employed or self-employed for 26 of the 66 weeks before the due date; nothing for the second parent | £18,328 ($24,835) |
| Stockholm | Foraldrapenning at the income-based rate for the first 180 days: on the labour market by the 240th day before the birth or the due date, with income above the lagstaniva floor in every month since | 240 consecutive days before the birth or the estimated date, assessed month by month by Forsakringskassan | Grundniva, a flat SEK 250 a day for those 180 days; the remaining 210 income-based days use whatever insured income you have by the time you take them | SEK 519,801 ($54,716) |
| Oslo | Foreldrepenger: pensionable income in at least six of the ten months before the leave starts, worth at least half of G (NOK 68,275 a year); work in another EEA country counts | Ten calendar months before the start of leave, which for the mother is up to three weeks before the due date | Engangsstonad of NOK 92,648 per child, but only after twelve months of continuous membership of the Norwegian national insurance scheme before the due date; a recent arrival usually fails both tests | NOK 772,027 ($81,956) |
Rules from the statutes and agency pages listed at the foot, retrieved 20 September 2026. The stake is cityparity's engine figure for the whole household statutory paid entitlement at its effective rate for one single earner on USD 150,000, restated in local currency at the build's exchange rate; it is the value of qualifying in full, and it is the same figure the parental leave by country ranking prices. Amounts in the fallback column are 2026 rates.
Read the clock column and the five cities sort into three kinds. Amsterdam and Berlin test the present: are you an employee, are you resident, are you insured, on the day the leave begins. London tests one employer's payroll over a stretch that, counted back from the qualifying week, begins before most people know they are pregnant. Stockholm and Oslo test insured income over a window that a relocation and a pregnancy can easily overlap, and both attach a fallback that is either small or, in Norway's case, gated behind a second clock.
The German row hides a smaller clock of its own. Elterngeld is owed from the first day of residence, and for a couple arriving from the United States that is the whole story on entitlement. The amount is another matter: it is 65% to 67% of the average net income over the twelve months before the birth, and months earned in the United States are simply absent from that average, so a parent who arrived four months before the birth is averaged over four German months and eight zeros. The EUR 300 floor catches the result. Months taxed in another EU or EEA country, or in Switzerland, are counted, which is one of several places where the two kinds of mover part ways.
Oslo, where the fallback has a clock too
Norway's foreldrepenger is 49 weeks at 100% of a basis capped at six times the national insurance base amount, worth NOK 772,027 to the earner in the table, the largest single stake on this page. The entry test is pensionable income in six of the ten months before the leave starts, and NAV's own wording is plain: work with income, or NAV payments that count as work, in at least six of the last ten months. Someone who arrives in Oslo and starts work with a due date six months away has, by the day the leave starts three weeks before that date, a little over five months of income. That is one month short.
The fallback is engangsstonad, a lump sum of NOK 92,648 per child in 2026, and the sum is not the problem. The condition is: folketrygdloven section 14-17 grants it only after twelve months of continuous membership of the national insurance scheme immediately before the due date, and membership for a resident worker begins on arrival. A parent who missed six of ten months has, by construction, missed twelve of twelve. The honest reading for a recent arrival is that NAV pays nothing for that birth, and the other parent's entitlement, if they earned one, is the household's only statutory money. The government proposed cutting the lump sum to NOK 60,000 from July 2026 and the budget agreement dropped the cut; the adopted figure for the whole of 2026 is the one above.
Two kinds of mover
From another EU or EEA country. Regulation 883/2004 requires each member state to treat periods of insurance or employment completed in another member state as if they had been completed under its own law. In practice: a parent moving from Berlin to Stockholm inside the 240-day window carries their German employment into the Swedish count, and Forsakringskassan's own legal position paper on the 240-day rule cites a case in which a parent who moved from Norway with a gap of two and a half months was held to qualify. Denmark's borger.dk says the same of its 160-hour test for anyone arriving from the EU, the EEA or the United Kingdom with fewer than four full months to go. Norway counts EEA work toward its six months in NAV's own words. The clocks still run; they just started before the move.
From the United States. None of this applies. The totalization agreements that stop a US mover paying social security twice, covered in how totalization agreements work, coordinate pensions and contributions and say nothing about family benefits, so an American arriving in Stockholm starts the 240-day clock on the first Swedish employment day, and one arriving in Oslo starts both Norwegian clocks on arrival. The rule being left behind is no kinder: FMLA's job protection needs twelve months with the employer and 1,250 hours in the year before the leave, and pays nothing either way, which is FMLA paid or unpaid sets out state by state. What changes at the border is that in Amsterdam and Berlin the wait is over on day one.
Put the two together and the planning rule for a transatlantic move with a family in mind is a date arithmetic. For Stockholm, employment must begin at least 240 days before the due date; for Oslo, at least six full months before the leave starts, and twelve before the due date if the lump sum is to be a backstop; for London, about 41 weeks before the due date for the employer's statutory pay, or 26 weeks of any employment in the 66 before it for the allowance. For Amsterdam and Berlin, the arrival date affects the amount in Germany and nothing in the Netherlands.
What the rules do not depend on
- Passport. Four of the five countries test residence, employment and insured income, and a US citizen on a work permit is tested exactly as a national is. Germany is the exception in form only: Elterngeld requires a non-EU parent to hold a settlement permit, an EU Blue Card, an ICT card or a residence permit that allows work for at least six months, which a relocating engineer will hold.
- The employer's generosity. Every rule above is about the state benefit. Collective-agreement top-ups in Sweden, Denmark and Norway generally carry a tenure test of their own, so they rarely rescue a recent arrival; what they pay when you do qualify is in what paid parental leave is worth.
- Which parent. Each parent is assessed separately. Where a country reserves weeks for each parent, the newly arrived parent's reserved share is the part at risk, and the transferable share can go to the parent who qualifies. The vocabulary of who gets which weeks is in parental leave vs paternity leave.
An agency decision is individual and turns on dates you supply, so treat this page as the map and the agency's letter as the territory.
FAQ
Does my nationality affect parental leave eligibility in Europe?
In the five countries on this page the rules turn on residence, employment and insured income rather than on passport, with one exception: Germany's Elterngeld requires a non-EU parent to hold a settlement permit, an EU Blue Card, an ICT card or a residence permit that allows work for at least six months, and excludes study and training permits unless the holder is working. Everywhere else a US citizen on a work permit and a Dutch citizen are tested the same way.
Can I count the months I worked before I moved?
Inside the EU and EEA, yes: Regulation 883/2004 requires each country to count periods of insurance or employment completed in another member state as if they were its own, so a Berlin-to-Stockholm mover carries the 240-day clock with them, and Denmark's borger.dk says pre-move EU hours count toward its 160-hour test. From the United States, no: there is no aggregation for family benefits under the totalization agreements, and every clock starts on the first insured day in the new country.
What if the second parent has been in the country longer?
Each parent is tested separately, so a parent who has been employed locally long enough keeps their own weeks at the full rate even if the newly arrived parent does not. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark the reserved weeks cannot be moved between parents, so a late arrival's reserved share is the part that pays at the fallback rate or not at all; the shared part can go to the parent who qualifies.
Does the employer's own leave policy change any of this?
Only for the money on top. Collective-agreement top-ups in Sweden, Denmark and Norway usually carry their own tenure test, often a year of employment before the birth, so a recent arrival who misses the statutory clock tends to miss the employer's clock too. What the top-ups pay when you do qualify is set out in the worked example of what paid parental leave is worth.
The leave line is one row of a whole budget on the city pages: Seattle vs Oslo and New York vs Amsterdam carry it beside taxes, childcare and healthcare. To see what the full entitlement is worth on your own salary, run the two-city comparison; the equivalent salary it prints is the bar an offer has to clear in the destination, and it is not an offer.
Sources. Netherlands: Wet arbeid en zorg (articles 3:1, 4:2, 4:2a and 6:3, which condition on being a werknemer and set no minimum service) and UWV, maximumdagloon (EUR 309.91 on 20 September 2026). Germany: BEEG section 1 (residence, the permit list in Abs. 7, the EUR 175,000 ceiling in Abs. 8), BEEG section 2 (EUR 300 to 1,800), Familienportal (BMFSFJ) on foreign income, SGB V section 24i and MuSchG section 20. United Kingdom: GOV.UK, Statutory Maternity Pay eligibility, Statutory Paternity Pay eligibility and Maternity Allowance (2026/27 rates GBP 129 and GBP 194.32). Sweden: Socialforsakringsbalken 12 kap. (23, 24 and 35 sections), Forsakringskassan, foraldrapenning and its legal position paper on the 240-day condition (rattsligt stallningstagande 2024:17), Forsakringskassan, SGI. Norway: folketrygdloven section 14-6, section 14-17, NAV, foreldrepenger, NAV, engangsstonad and Stortinget, vedtak 106 for 2026 (NOK 92,648). Denmark: borger.dk, barsel for lonmodtagere. EU coordination: Regulation (EC) 883/2004, article 6. United States: US Department of Labor, FMLA. Every stored value carries its own source and date in data/_meta.json, per the methodology.
Figures here come from cityparity's per-city engine and were current at publication; benefit rules, thresholds and exchange rates move, so treat any single number as a strong estimate and run your own inputs. This page describes statutory rules in general terms and is not advice on an individual claim. Where our comparison pages quote an equivalent salary, it is the bar an offer has to clear in the destination city and it is not a job offer. See the methodology.