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The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing the willingness to benefit from temporary leave (TL), a life-course policy consisting of the entitlement to temporary paid leaves from work in exchange for delayed retirement.

A survey has been conducted amongst the occupied workforce of a medium-sized Spanish town, fairly characteristic of European urban environments in terms of its labour-force composition. The factors predisposing to TL are probed by means of a multivariate analysis (binary logistic regression). The analysis is framed in an age-gender perspective.

The noteworthy favourable predisposition towards TL emerging from the survey, mainly for the purposes of caring for children and parents, studying and preparing for a new job, appears mostly influenced by the educational level and by the fact of having or not children, without clear sex variations.

Notwithstanding the local scope of the survey, its results might orientate future research on TL, which is an emerging policy issue crosscutting several widely recognised social-policy targets within the European Union, such as the extension of working life, lifelong learning and gender equality throughout the life course.