At some point, almost everyone will have to take time away from work to care for a new child, a family member who is sick, or to recover from a personal illness. Caring for others, and receiving care ourselves, is part of being human. It’s the foundation of the economy; we wouldn’t have a workforce with no one to care for and nurture employees. And it’s a key component of leading a fulfilling life. Care work can be some of the most joyful work that we will ever do—if we can take the time to do it without fear of being economically or socially penalized. But all too often, that’s not the case. The vast majority of states and workplaces still have no paid family leave policies, and this can hit working families with new children especially hard. They’re often caught in a double bind: They can’t afford to take unpaid time off work to care for their child, but they also can’t afford the astronomical cost of child care.
We see a guaranteed paid family leave scheme, funded through a national social insurance program, with supports for parents exiting and re-entering work and for businesses to ensure work coverage and smooth transitions, as a big part of solving the infant care problem in the United States. Paid family leave is currently how all other advanced economies resolve infant care, often with paid leaves for one or both parents of several months to a year or more. Infant care is the most expensive kind of child care, because it requires more teachers with smaller groups of babies and more one-on-one care than does care for older children. The Care Index found that center-based infant care costs, on average, 12 percent more than care for older children. The Index also found that the average cost of center-based care for infants is more than the cost of in-state tuition at a four-year college in 33 states. More, the average cost for nanny care is more than three times the cost of college, more than half the median household income, and 188 percent of a minimum wage earner’s income. Infant care is also difficult to find, as some providers close more expensive infant and toddler classrooms in order to stay in business.
Care work can be some of the most joyful work that we will ever do—if we can take the time to do it without fear of being economically or socially penalized. But all too often, that’s not the case. The vast majority of states and workplaces still have no paid family leave policies, and this can hit working families with new children especially hard.
Paid leave could help address these issues, and more, by helping families to defray the high cost of infant care and making it easier to combine breadwinning and caregiving responsibilities without penalty. Many working parents say they wish they had more time to spend at home with their families; building in this quality time could improve their well-being and, ultimately, their productivity at work.
The United States is one of very few countries worldwide without guaranteed paid parental leave at the federal level. The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FMLA), the only existing federal leave policy in the U.S., guarantees eligible employees of covered employers twelve weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period for specified family or medical reasons. But there are problems with the FMLA resulting in unequal access and low rates of usage. FMLA issues include a narrow definition of family, requirement that businesses granting leave have more than 50 employees, and, most importantly, the fact that leave under FMLA is unpaid, and therefore burdensome for those who cannot afford the loss of wages.
States are welcome to develop their own, more expansive policies, but not many have taken on this task, and even fewer have done so comprehensively. Only three states in the U.S. currently guarantee paid family and medical leave: California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. New York’s paid family leave will begin being phased in starting 2018. Washington state passed, but has yet to fund, paid family leave. Five states currently have paid sick leave policies. (A detailed state-by-state breakdown of work leave insurance policies can be found here.)
In most states, employees taking leave are eligible only for a percentage of their weekly compensation, up to a predetermined ceiling. For low-income workers, the partial compensation can be so low as to make taking leave close to impossible. If a full-time worker earning minimum state wage ($8.38) in New Jersey, for example, took one week of leave, he or she would only earn $221—only 66 percent of their usual $335 per week. It is no surprise, then, that socioeconomic status greatly affects paid leave usage.
There are proposals to improve paid leave on both sides of the political aisle. On the left, there is the Family Act, pending in Congress, which would grant two-thirds of monthly income for 12 weeks to cover parental or medical leave. The act would be funded by employee and employer payroll contributions of 0.2 percent of a worker’s wages to a government fund, which would be administered by the Social Security Administration. On the right, there is the Earned Income Leave Benefit, proposed by the conservative American Action Forum. This proposal would establish a paid leave earned income tax benefit of up to $3,500 over 12 weeks for workers with annual incomes below $28,000. Paid leave reform has support across the aisle—and for good reason.
Providing paid sick time to employees reduces the spread of illness, increases productivity, and improves public health. Paid leave policies increase women’s labor force attachment and representation in the workforce, which in turn has measurable positive impacts on the GDP.
Paid leave offers important benefits to both employers and employees. Providing paid sick time to employees reduces the spread of illness, increases productivity, and improves public health. Paid leave policies increase women’s labor force attachment and representation in the workforce, which in turn has measurable positive impacts on the GDP. In fact, Cornell University economists attribute the lack of paid family leave and other “family-friendly” policies to the sharp drop in the U.S. female labor force participation rate in the last two decades compared to other advanced economies––from 6th place to 17th place. Leave policies improve workplace environments by increasing employee retention, morale, and productivity. Research has likewise shown that there is considerable cost in failing to adopt paid leave policies, including a loss of talent (particularly female talent) due to high turnover rates, a loss of productivity in the workforce, and, in turn, substantial loss of economic activity—a loss valued at $500 billion annually, according to one estimate.
More than anything, paid leave policy provides people of all genders with the choice to work and care according to family and personal needs.
Guided by existing research, we propose that paid family leave policies—at the local, state, or federal level—should:
Guarantee at least three months of paid family and medical leave yearly, with guaranteed job security upon return from leave. (We also note that there is not much data on the optimal length of parental leave––for parents, for children, for families, for employers––thus, additional research is needed to help guide policymakers in setting the best time frames.)
Be gender neutral, based on studies showing that the participation of both parents in leave is beneficial to the distribution of paid market work, home and care work and, by making room for greater parental involvement in children’s lives, the healthy development of children. A gender-neutral policy would also allow us to address the needs of diverse parents, family structures, and caregivers across the gender spectrum.
Use of incentives (sometimes called “daddy quotas”) to create cultures that encourage fathers, and both parents in gay and lesbian families, to take leave after the birth, adoption or fostering of a child.
Set minimum income eligibility levels so that lower wage workers can afford to take paid family and medical leave without being unduly penalized.
More than anything, paid leave policy provides people of all genders with the choice to work and care according to family and personal needs.
