Paid household go away (PFL) present paid time without work for employees who look after a new child (parental go away) or look after a sick or quickly disabled member of the family (caregiving go away). 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 tendencies earlier than and after the enactment of PFL. The authors deal with the introduction of PFL in 3 massive states: California, New York and New Jersey. They use knowledge from 1996-2019 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to determine employees whose partner or little one experiences a well being shock (i.e., hospitalization or surgical procedure) throughout the survey. Based mostly on this method, the authors discover that:
…getting access to 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 look after house 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 according to earlier literature that has discovered that girls are considerably extra more likely to have interaction in caregiving for his or her ailing spouses than males. Apparently, the results of PFL entry on employment are concentrated amongst spousal caregivers with low ranges of training, suggesting that government-provided PFL could cut back pre-existing disparities in go away use and related outcomes.
You’ll be able to learn the full paper or the NBER Bulletin abstract.
