Panel:
Lessons from California: How Paid Leave Policies Can Boost Family Health and Economic Stability
(Family and Child Policy)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Paid family leave is fast becoming a heated issue in our national debate. The U.S. remains the only high-income country in the world without a systematic paid leave program for new parents, despite a growing body of evidence pointing to numerous benefits for families. With more families relying on two working parents, a lack of paid family leave policies puts new parents at risk for poor health outcomes and economic instability—especially if they’re already struggling to make ends meet. Even for those eligible for job protections under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), many still return to work immediately. Unpaid leave simply isn’t tenable.
Most of the policy experimentation on paid family leave has occurred at the city and (increasingly) state levels. California was the first state to mandate nearly universal paid leave coverage for workers, allowing employees to take up to six weeks of partial pay to care for an ill family member or bond with a new child. Localities like San Francisco then enacted their own paid leave ordinances, augmenting the state policy with more generous benefits. This panel draws from latest research on the impacts of these city- and state-level policies to inform other jurisdictions—and even federal policymakers—that may be considering providing similar paid leave benefits for workers.
The first paper uses restricted data from the National Health Interview Survey (2000-2012) to analyze California’s 2004 Paid Family Leave Law’s effects on postpartum psychological health of new mothers. The second paper uses a survey of 2,000 new mothers to examine the effects of the law on postpartum health care utilization. The third paper uses administrative data from the California Employment Development Department to detect uptake and duration of leave after San Francisco’s paid parental leave ordinance took effect in 2017. Finally, the last paper uses a robust simulation model to predict changes in leave-taking behavior if paid family leave were implemented nationally as part of the proposed Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act.
Together, these papers provide critical evidence to advance and inform policy experimentation and implementation on paid family leave programs across the country. While paid family leave can benefit all workers and their families, these programs likely have an outsized impact on low-income families, for whom leave often means an impossible choice between economic security and family health and well-being.
