Paid household depart (PFL) present paid time without work for staff who take care of a new child (parental depart) or take care of a sick or quickly disabled member of the family (caregiving depart). The US is among the few international locations that doesn’t supply 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 raised 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 concentrate on the introduction of PFL in 3 massive states: California, New York and New Jersey. They use information from 1996-2019 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to establish staff whose partner or youngster experiences a well being shock (i.e., hospitalization or surgical procedure) throughout the survey. Primarily based on this method, the authors discover that:
…getting access to PFL results in a 7.0 proportion level decline within the likelihood that working wives whose partner has a hospitalization or surgical procedure report “leaving a job to take care of residence or household” within the survey interviews following the well being shock. For males, there is no such thing as a such impact. This gender distinction within the impact of PFL entry is in step with earlier literature that has discovered that girls are considerably extra prone to interact in caregiving for his or her unwell spouses than males. Curiously, the consequences of PFL entry on employment are concentrated amongst spousal caregivers with low ranges of schooling, suggesting that government-provided PFL might scale back pre-existing disparities in depart use and related outcomes.
You’ll be able to learn the full paper or the NBER Bulletin abstract.
