Family Leave

Pinka Chatterji and Sara Markowitz find that longer maternity leaves—and fathers who take leave—has positive effects on mothers' health:

.... Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, we examine measures of depression, overall health status, and substance use. We use a standard OLS as well as an instrumental variables approach with county-level employment conditions and state-level maternity leave policies as identifying instruments. The results suggest that longer maternity leave from work, both paid and un-paid, is associated with declines in depressive symptoms, a reduction in the likelihood of severe depression, and an improvement in overall maternal health. We also find that having a spouse that did not take any paternal leave after childbirth is associated with higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms. We do not find, however, that length of paternal leave is associated with overall maternal health, and we find only mixed evidence that leave length after childbirth affects maternal alcohol use and smoking.

A tip of the hat to the House Dems for what looks like an excellent new family leave insurance proposal. Some highlights from their summary:

• Provide all workers with 12 weeks of paid leave over a 12-month period to care for a new child, provide for an ill family member, treat their own illness, or deal with an exigency caused by the deployment of a member of the military;
• Provide these benefits through a new trust fund that is financed equally by employers and employees, who will each contribute 0.2% of the employee’s pay;
• Progressively tier the benefits so that a low wage worker (earning less than $30,000) will receive full or near full salary replacement, middle income workers ($30,000- $60,000) receive 55% wage replacement, and higher earners (over $60,000) receive 40-45%, with the benefit capped at approximately $800 per week;
• Administer the program through the Department of Labor which will contract with states to administer the program (similar to how the Unemployment Insurance program is run).

The proposal is self-financing, so even the deficit-obsessed should be able to support it.

A big problem with the current Family and Medical Leave Act, aside from the leave being unpaid, is that it doesn't provide leave to workers at businesses with less than 50 employees. From the summary, it's unclear whether this legislation would address that problem.

It's all but official—Washington State is now the second state in the nation—joining California and 168 countries—with paid family leave:

Lawmakers wrapped up the 2007 Legislative session Sunday with last-hour compromises on paid family leave, the state pension system and the mandatory assessment test for high school graduation.

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However the new bill establishing a five-week paid family leave is perhaps the Democrats' most notable legislation this year. The measure is the culmination of a battle that has raged for years, lead by the union interests who are the Democrats' strongest supporters. As Democrats increased their majorities to near record levels, paid family leave became an 'if-not-now, when?' question.

The compromise bill allows workers to take paid leave to care for newborn or adopted children. If Gov. Chris Gregoire signs the bill as expected, it would go provide the leave beginning in October 2009.

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Currently California is the only other state that provides paid family leave -- but as Washington takes it up, several others including Oregon, New York and New Jersey are considering the legislation.

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Word is that the the five nations without paid family leave—Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New
Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States—are none to happy about this radical trend.

PS: Pay-go fans will want to know, is it paid for?

Where the money to pay the parents $250 a week will come from remains unsettled. Senate Bill 5659 calls for a task force to come up with a recommendation for funding - which caused heartburn among some former supporters but was accepted as reasonable by the measure's key proponents.

So not yet, but sometimes that's the way progressive change happens.

Sounds like the House in Washington State weakened proposed leave legislation somewhat, but it's good news that they passed it. Since the Senate has already passed more progressive legislation, it seems safe to assume that Washington State will join California and the 163 nations that already have paid leave.

The state House on Friday passed a significantly scaled-down paid family leave measure, which would provide five weeks of paid leave to care for a new child.

Lawmakers also created a task force to figure out how to pay for the program.

The measure, which passed the House 62-35, now must go back to the Senate, where it passed last month with much broader language. House and Senate leaders will need to resolve the differences before the measure is forwarded to Gov. Chris Gregoire.

“No one should have to choose between the job that they need and the baby that they love,” said Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle. “But that is exactly the choice that is facing far too many people in Washington today. It’s time for us to join virtually every other country in the world, by helping parents be with their newborns and their adopted children.”

Under the bill, starting in 2009, workers would get $250 a week for up to five weeks to care for a newborn or a newly adopted child. But a 2-cent-an-hour tax that was supposed to be taken from employees’ pay to cover the program was removed from the legislation. Instead, a new 13-member task force – including lawmakers, business representatives and others – would study how to finance the program. The task force must report its findings to the Legislature by Jan. 1.

Supporters have been trying to get paid family leave through the Legislature since 2001. Two years ago, it passed the Senate but got stopped in the House.

A coalition of mothers and their supporters has given the measure momentum this year, sending nearly 8,000 e-mails to lawmakers since the legislative session began in January and conducting rallies at the Capitol.

The version that passed out of the Senate would have also allowed workers to use the time to care for a seriously ill parent, but that language was removed in the House. Also removed by House Democrats was allowing the weekly payment of $250 to rise yearly with inflation.

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