Nationwide Access to Paid Parental Leave
The Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Writing at Slippery Rock University hosts an annual scholarship contest, the James Strickland Award, for the best essays to come out of our first-year writing course (English 102.) Below is one of the honorable mentions for the 2021-2022 academic year. In selecting this essay for recognition, Dr. Strickland noted, “everyone, I am told, assumes that any program that would improve the lives of our citizens would be too expensive and too much government overreach. Jaden Boyle makes the case that Nationwide Access to Paid Parental Leave would actually have a positive impact on our economy. Jaden’s argument is so well presented that it is a wonder our country is one of the few not offering paid parental leave to its citizens. Let’s change that!“
By Jaden Boyle
In many cases, people assume that in order to implement programs that increase the quality of life of citizens, the country would be putting itself in more debt. However, that is simply not always the case. Although many think that paid family leave would negatively impact the economy due to decreased employment, evidence shows that it actually has a positive impact on the economy and society by means including decreasing the gender wage gap and promoting women going back to work after having children.
Paid parental leave is not a new concept nor is it a revolutionary one. It is actually fairly common within other countries. According to research conducted by three scientists from three separate organizations including Northeastern University, McGill University, and the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, “all industrialized nations, other than the United States, grant parents the right to take time off work with pay following the birth or adoption of a child (Earle, Mokomane, & Heymann, 2011) (Rossin-Slater par.4). However, according to information collected and reported by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, “only 13% of all U.S. workers — and only 5% of low-wage workers — have access to paid family and medical leave after a new baby arrives, despite the fact that more than half of all new mothers work outside the home for pay” (Rowe par. 7). Legislation in the United States “requires employers to provide job-protected parental leave for new mothers covered under the legislation. In most cases the leave is unpaid, and rarely longer than 12 weeks in duration” (Kerr par. 1). Despite the legislation, the fact that it is not required it be paid leave means often times it is not which puts new families in a difficult situation regarding finances.
The lack of standards for businesses regarding such policies leads to a majority of people having to take extremely limited time off if any. For example, based on statistics provided by the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2014, “in the United States, only 53% of working people are able to stitch together any form of paid leave by using sick days, vacation days, disability leave, and maternity leave (The White House Council of Economic Advisers 2014) and only half of new mothers take any type of paid leave around their child’s birth, indicating a serious lack of paid leave (Laughlin 2011)” (Rowe par. 19). This contrast raises the question of why the United States has resisted adopting similar policies.
Like many other programs that have been implemented in other countries, there is hesitation when the suggestion is made that the United States adopt them as well due to concerns with the costliness of these programs. We are a very economically centered country, and the program does not, from face value, strike government officials as a profitable program or one that will directly, significantly impact our economy in a positive way which is likely the primary reason that the program’s potential benefits get overlooked.
However, when researched, the program has been found to have quite a positive economic impact. One way it has a positive impact is by decreasing the gender wage gap. According to a study published in Fortune magazine that was conducted by the National Employment Law Project, which is a collective largely recognized for its efforts to unionize workers and raise the minimum wage, paid parental leave “helps lower the wage gap between women and men (Fortune 2015)” (Rowe par. 18). Another way the program positively impacts the economy is by increasing the rate at which women go back to work after having children. Three recent studies based on outcomes of paid family leave adoption in the United States showed that the implementation of paid family leave programs “has been associated with improvements in child health (Stearns, 2015), increases in mothers’ job continuity, and postbirth labor force attachment (Baum & Ruhm, 2016; Rossin-Slater, Ruhm, & Waldfogel, 2013), and reductions in means-tested assistance around a birth (Houser & Vartanian, 2012)” (Ybarra par. 1). This shows that women are more likely to go back to work when provided with paid leave which would strengthen the workforce and potentially lead to increased consumer spending which would, in turn, pay back into the economy. Not only are women more likely to go back to work, but another study of the outcomes of the labor market post-implementation shows “evidence that PFL led to 10 to 17 percent increases in usual weekly work hours for employed mothers” (Rossin-Slater par. 3). This shows that not only would they be reentering the workforce sooner, but actually working more hours too, which is a huge benefit from an employer’s standpoint.
One common concern regarding paid parental leave is how our country would fund such a program however, the resolution to this concern is rather simple. On top of the implementation of paid parental leave programs showing that they have a positive impact on the economy through strengthening the labor force, they also decrease the use of other public assistance programs. Based on a study conducted on paid parental leave program that already exists in California and New Jersey, it found that the program “was positively associated with reductions in TANF enrollment around a birth (Houser & Vartanian, 2012)” (Ybarra par. 12). According to the findings of a study published by Rutgers’ center of women and work and another study published in a scholarly journal titled Community, Work & Family, “fathers who are able to take paid time to care for their children are more involved in their kids’ lives 9 months after the child is born, and are less likely to rely on public assistance (Nepomnyaschy and Waldfogel 2007; Houser and Vartanian 2012)” (Rowe par. 24). This would make the cost of the program more feasible because the government would be able to take a portion of the funding from the aforementioned public assistance programs. This would be possible because these programs would become less used when paid parental leave is granted and would therefore require less funding. This would eliminate the counterargument that it would take more money out of citizens’ pockets by means of taxes because it would be using money that we already have just relocating it.
In addition to all of the positive economic impacts, there are also many other positive effects of the implementation of paid parental leave. For example, one study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research that collected data from across nine different European countries over the span of twenty-five years, shows that it also “combats poverty, gives children a healthy start, lowers infant mortality by more than 20% (Ruhm 1998) (Rowe par. 18). All of these things set children and families up for greater success in life and would in turn lower the amount of assistance needed to help get citizens out of poverty. Therefore, from both a psychological and economic standpoint the implementation of paid parental leave programs nationwide could only have positive impacts on our country. Overall, positive impacts have been shown in the integration of the program that has occurred thus far and will hopefully continue to occur so that “similar programs in New York and the District of Columbia will take effect in 2018 and 2020, respectively” (Bartel par. 2) as planned. In brief, paid parental leave has a long-standing existence in other developed countries across the globe and has not only shown to positively impact those countries, but also the United States in areas in which the program has been implemented such as California and New Jersey. Thus, if the implementation of a nationwide paid parental leave program would not only positively impact the country’s economy, but also the overall well-being of its citizens, it is clear that the implementation would be extremely beneficial for the country as a whole.
