Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study estimates the causal effects of the paid sick time mandates in Connecticut, Washington, D.C. and Seattle on fertility. Since the local paid sick time mandates in the U.S. have been adopted recently, little is known about their impacts on childbirth. Connecticut was the first state in the U.S. to implement a paid sick time mandate in January 2012. The paid sick time mandates in Washington, D.C. and Seattle went into effect in November 2008 and September 2012, respectively. Currently neither Connecticut nor Washington, D.C. has an effective paid family leave law, and the paid family leave law in Seattle went into effect in 2017. By examining the three mandates in Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and Seattle, I am able to disentangle the policy effect of paid sick time mandate from that of paid family leave law. I use the Synthetic Control method, along with both 2004 - 2018 Annual Fertility Supplement data from Current Population Survey (CPS), and 2006 - 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) data, to evaluate the impacts of the three paid sick time mandates on women's choices about giving birth. This study is, to the best of my knowledge, the first to present the effects of local paid sick time mandates in the U.S. on fertility.