Paid household go away (PFL) present paid time without work for staff who take care of a new child (parental go away) or take care of a sick or quickly disabled member of the family (caregiving go away). The US is without doubt one of the few nations that doesn’t provide PFL, however a variety of State have determined to undertake their very own coverage. California was the primary state to enact PFL and did so in 2004. As of now, 11 states (plus DC) have some for of PFL.
To higher perceive how PFL impacts job retention, a paper by Coile, Rossin-Slater and Su (2022) depend on a difference-in-difference technique to look at job retention developments earlier than and after the enactment of PFL. The authors deal with the introduction of PFL in 3 giant states: California, New York and New Jersey. They use knowledge from 1996-2019 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to determine staff whose partner or little one experiences a well being shock (i.e., hospitalization or surgical procedure) in the course of the survey. Based on this method, the authors discover that:
…accessing PFL results in a 7.0 proportion level decline within the chance that working wives whose partner has a hospitalization or surgical procedure report “leaving a job to care for home or family” within the survey interviews following the well being shock. For males, there isn’t any such impact. This gender distinction within the impact of PFL entry is in line with earlier literature that has discovered that ladies are considerably extra prone to interact in caregiving for his or her in poor health spouses than males. Interestingly, the results of PFL entry on employment are concentrated amongst spousal caregivers with low ranges of training, suggesting that government-provided PFL could scale back pre-existing disparities in go away use and related outcomes.
You can learn the full paper or the NBER Bulletin abstract.