A
new study by the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University reports that working women who have paid family leave are
much more likely to be working after the birth of a child and, most often,
experience an increase in wage from pre- to post-birth.
The
study analyzed information from the US Department of Labor between 1997 and
2009. Among the findings, the study noted that since the mid-1980s, there
has been a 13% increase (now nearly 73%)
in the percentage of children with both parents (or the only parent) working
outside the home. And despite a tremendous amount of rhetoric
about “family values,” “support for working families,” and “keeping our
children secure,” the United States lags far behind other industrialized
nations when it comes to policies that support workers needing time off for
family time and needs.
Except
for only a few states, practice in this country is limited to unpaid leave,
despite 1993’s passage of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which requires
that companies with a least 50 workers provide up to 12 weeks of leave (unpaid
and not job-protected) annually “for their own health or the health of a family
members.” This leaves most employees to patch together sick time,
vacation time, disability insurance, or unpaid time off to deal with personal
or family health problems. Most low-income workers have not vacation,
sick leave, or PTO (Paid Time Off).
The
United States in among the 3 countries
(out of 178 – the others are Swaziland and Papua New Guinea) that do not
mandate maternity paid leave. And only 11% of private sector
employees and 17% of public sector employees have access to paid leave through
their employer.
Specific
key findings of the report include:
¬ Women who report taking paid leave are
more likely to be working 9 to 12 months after a child’s birth than are those
who report taking no leave at all (“non‐leave
takers”).
¬ Paid family leave increases wages for
women with children. Women who report leaves of 30 or more days are 54%
more likely to report wage increases in the year following the child’s birth
than are women who take no leave at all.
¬ Women who return to work after a paid leave
have a 39% lower likelihood of receiving public assistance and a 40% lower
likelihood of food stamp receipt in the year following the child’s birth, when
compared to those who return to work and take no leave at all.
¬ Men who return to work after a paid
family leave have a significantly lower likelihood of receiving public
assistance and food stamps in the year following the child’s birth when
compared to those who return to work and take no family leave at all.
Linda
Houser of the Center for Women and Work summarizes the positive economic
benefit of paid leave policies: "While we have known for a long time
about the maternal and infant health benefits of leave policies, we can now
link paid family leave to greater labor force attachment and increased wages
for women, as well as to reduced spending by businesses in the form of employee
replacement costs, and by governments in the form of public assistance."
Forbes magazine sums up the economic benefits of paid leave
in this way:
1. Paid
family leave addresses a reality that directly
impacts every business and should be planned for strategically,
uniformly and deliberately,
2. Paid
family leave is NOT a tax, but income
replacement insurance program funded by employees at minimal cost, and
3. We are paying for a cost for caregiving already -
indirectly and inefficiently, through employee turnover, retraining, and
workplace productivity.
This
is the type of information Chrysalis works to provide to policy makers through
SOLUTIONS, our annual legislative breakfast. Our work is to provide
factual, objective information that should be taken into account when decisions
– state, local, individual – are being made that affect girls, women, and
working families.
Thank
you for being a leader in this work.
If
you’d like to read the full report: http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/Pay_Matters_-_Positive_Economic_Impacts_of_Paid_Family_L.pdf?docID=9681
