The Affect of Paid Household Depart on Job Retention – Healthcare Economist

Paid household depart (PFL) present paid day off for employees who take care of a new child (parental depart) or take care of a sick or briefly disabled member of the family (caregiving depart). The US is without doubt one of the few international locations that doesn’t provide 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 traits earlier than and after the enactment of PFL. The authors give attention to the introduction of PFL in 3 giant states: California, New York and New Jersey. They use information from 1996-2019 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to determine employees whose partner or youngster experiences a well being shock (i.e., hospitalization or surgical procedure) in the course of the survey. Based mostly on this method, the authors discover that:

…accessing PFL results in a 7.0 share 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 isn’t 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 interact in caregiving for his or her sick spouses than males. Apparently, the consequences of PFL entry on employment are concentrated amongst spousal caregivers with low ranges of schooling, suggesting that government-provided PFL could cut back pre-existing disparities in depart use and related outcomes. 

You’ll be able to learn the full paper or the NBER Bulletin summary.