pd.tslib.monthrange is an unadvertised / undocumented function that handles the days_in_month calculation (adjusting for leap years). This could/should prob be added as a property to Timestamp/DatetimeIndex (and to ``.dt``)

In [34]: df = DataFrame({'date' : pd.date_range('20120101',periods=15,freq='M') })

In [35]: df['year'] = df['date'].dt.year

In [36]: df['month'] = df['date'].dt.month

In [37]: df['days_in_month'] = df.apply(lambda x: pd.tslib.monthrange(x['year'],x['month'])[1], axis=1)

In [38]: df
Out[38]: 
         date  year  month  days_in_month
0  2012-01-31  2012      1             31
1  2012-02-29  2012      2             29
2  2012-03-31  2012      3             31
3  2012-04-30  2012      4             30
4  2012-05-31  2012      5             31
5  2012-06-30  2012      6             30
6  2012-07-31  2012      7             31
7  2012-08-31  2012      8             31
8  2012-09-30  2012      9             30
9  2012-10-31  2012     10             31
10 2012-11-30  2012     11             30
11 2012-12-31  2012     12             31
12 2013-01-31  2013      1             31
13 2013-02-28  2013      2             28
14 2013-03-31  2013      3             31