Parental Leave Laws Have Only Slight Impact on New Parents' Leave Taking

2/20/2003

From: Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University, 212-854-7863; jw205@columbia.edu

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 20 -- The following was released today by the Center for Public Information on Population Research:

Federal and state parental leave laws, enacted in the 1990s, have led to only slight increases in the frequency and length of new mothers' unpaid leave and have had no impact on fathers' leave taking, according to a study published in the February issue of the journal Demography.

The right to job-protected unpaid leave has not led new fathers to increase their use of leave or lengthen the leave they already take, report researchers from Columbia University's School of Social Work. Among some employed women, the researchers found evidence of slight increases in the use of unpaid maternity leave as well as somewhat longer leaves, with women who were covered by these laws taking 10 percent to 30 percent longer leaves than those who were not covered.

Researchers Wen-Jui Han and Jane Waldfogel tracked the unpaid leave taken by 8,500 new parents during the three months after the birth of a child between 1991 and 1999. They found that the share of workers eligible for job-protected parental leave under state or federal law more than doubled during that time, to include more than 40 percent of all workers. But the likelihood a worker would take leave grew only minimally.

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act entitles workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn, or a newly adopted or newly placed foster child, and to return to the same job afterward. Only employees who worked 25 hours per week (1,250 hours) the previous year in businesses with at least 50 workers are eligible. Some states further expand these benefits.

"We know from surveys that financial pressures are the main reasons employees don't take leave or take less leave than they feel they need," said Waldfogel. "If the U.S. wants to give parents real choices about spending more time with their children during the critical early months, then we should explore ways to implement paid leave."

In European nations and in Canada, workers on parental leave are paid a portion of their salaries through a public insurance fund made up of contributions from both employees and employers, she reported. In 2002, California became the first U.S. state to enact a law providing paid leave for maternity or paternity.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Demography is the peer-reviewed journal published by the Population Association of America. The full article, "Parental Leave: The Impact of Recent Legislation on Parents' Leave Taking," is available on http://www.prb.org/cpipr. Username: cpipr. Password: demography. Or call the Center for Public Information on Population Research, 202-939-5414. The Center, a project of the Population Reference Bureau, is funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.