Public Policies, Women's Employment after Childbearing, and Child Well-Being

Washbrook, Elizabeth; Ruhm, Christopher J.; Han, Weiyu

doi:10.2202/1935-1682.2938

Cited by 35 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…A working paper by Jonathan Pingle (2003) analyzes data from 1993 to 1999. In contrast to the findings by Washbrook and associates (2011), Pingle finds that AYC exemption length is not associated with employment rates among single mothers. No existing study examines the associations between AYC exemptions and work hours, though work hours may be an important behavioral outcome of the policy.…”

Section: Prior Studiescontrasting

confidence: 79%

“…The study does not examine employment rates directly but suggests that short exemptions (or the absence of an exemption) may be positively associated with employment, given that maternal employment is a known barrier to breastfeeding (Lindberg 1996; Roe et al 1999; Kimbro 2006; Baker and Milligan 2008; Mandal, Roe, and Fein 2010). In a paper using data from 2001, Elizabeth Washbrook and associates (2011) find that a single mother’s odds of working within 9 months of giving birth are substantially lower if she lives in a state with an AYC exemption of 12or more months than if she lives in one with a shorter exemption. A working paper by Jonathan Pingle (2003) analyzes data from 1993 to 1999.…”

Section: Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Welfare as Maternity Leave? Exemptions from Welfare Work Requirements and Maternal Employment

Hill

2012

Social Service Review

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In some states, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program offers the equivalent of paid maternity leave without job protection to low-income, single mothers of infants. Age-of-youngest-child (AYC) exemptions waive work requirements for TANF recipients after the birth of a child, generally for 3–12 months, depending on the state. This study uses data from the Current Population Survey (1998–2008) to examine whether the availability and length of AYC exemptions are predictive of rates of employment, work, and full-time work among low-educated single mothers with infants. The analysis uses the difference-in-differences (DD) technique, a comparison of outcomes under different policy treatments and between treatment and comparison groups. The results suggest that AYC exemptions are not related to employment or work rates but that living in a state with no AYC exemption is strongly and positively associated with rates of full-time work among low-educated mothers with infants.

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Section: Prior Studiescontrasting

confidence: 79%

Section: Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare as Maternity Leave? Exemptions from Welfare Work Requirements and Maternal Employment

Hill

2012

Social Service Review

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“…State unpaid leave statutes are also associated with increased leave-taking although the effects are small and the estimates are less consistent (Klerman and Leibowitz, 1997;Han and Waldfogel, 2003;Washbrook, Ruhm, Waldfogel, and Han, 2011). The effects of unpaid leave policies are largest for relatively advantaged women, who are more likely to be eligible for leave under such policies and able to afford unpaid time off work.…”

Section: Pagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Program on Mothers' Leave-Taking and Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes

Rossin‐Slater

Ruhm

2011

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This analysis uses March Current Population Survey data from 1999-2010 and a differences-in-differences approach to examine how California's first in the nation paid family leave (PFL) program affected leave-taking by mothers following childbirth, as well as subsequent labor market outcomes. We obtain robust evidence that the California program more than doubled the overall use of maternity leave, increasing it from around three to six or seven weeks for the typical new mother -with particularly large growth for less advantaged groups. We also provide suggestive evidence that PFL increased the usual weekly work hours of employed mothers of one-to-three year-old children by 6 to 9% and that their wage incomes may have risen by a similar amount. The United States is the only advanced industrialized country without a national law providing new mothers (and often fathers) with entitlements to paid family leave (PFL).However, three states have implemented paid leave programs, the first of these being California, where PFL took effect in 2004. We study how California's program has affected leave-taking by mothers following childbirth, and the extent to which these effects differ across population subgroups. We are particularly interested in learning whether PFL has reduced previous disparities in leave-taking, whereby advantaged mothers have been much more likely to use leave than their less advantaged counterparts. We also provide an initial investigation of the medium-term impacts on mothers' labor market outcomes: employment, work hours, and wage income.The analysis uses March Current Population Survey data from 1999-2010 and a differences-in-differences (DD) approach to compare pre-versus post-program implementation experiences of mothers with infants or young children -the treatment groups -to control groups alternatively consisting of women with older children, childless women, men with non-infant children, or new mothers in other states. 1 We obtain robust evidence that the California program increased leave-taking, more than doubling overall maternity leave use -increasing it from around 3 to 6 or 7 weeks -with particularly large growth for less advantaged mothers (those who are less educated, unmarried, or nonwhite) who had relatively low levels of baseline use. This contrasts starkly with the results for other state family leave laws (most of which extend rights to unpaid leave beyond those in the FMLA), where the estimated effects are much larger for college-educated and married women than for less advantaged counterparts (Han, Ruhm and Waldfogel, 2009). The exploration of effects on medium-term labor market outcomes provides 1 We considered men with infant children as a treatment group, since such fathers are covered under PFL, but did not find consistent evidence of effects on leave-taking. This may have occurred because low rates of paternity leave use imply that we did not have the power to detect statistically significant effects.Page 2 more equivocal results, but with evidence that paid fami...

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“…Repeated cohorts (if available) can be used to estimate effects of changes in policies. In addition, geographic or other forms of variation within a country can be used (Washbrook, Ruhm, Waldfogel & Han, 2011; Esping-Andersen et al, 2012). But even with single cohorts, comparative analyses can still be informative.…”

Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-economic inequality in childhood and beyond: an overview of challenges and findings from comparative analyses of cohort studies

2013

LLCS

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The growing number of countries with large child cohort studies offers an unprecedented opportunity for comparative research. A topic of central interest in my research is, to what extent the sizable gaps in development that exist between children from different socioeconomic status (SES) groups in the US are also present in other countries, and to what extent the mechanisms explaining these gaps are similar or different across countries. This overview draws on the results of comparative analyses of birth cohort study data collected in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to illustrate the challenges that arise in carrying out this kind of research and the way these challenges were met – in particular those having to do with data access and comparability, and those having to do with causal inference. I conclude that this type of research also offers great promise as shown by findings on SES gaps in child development in the four countries.

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Public Policies, Women's Employment after Childbearing, and Child Well-Being

Cited by 35 publications

References 35 publications

Welfare as Maternity Leave? Exemptions from Welfare Work Requirements and Maternal Employment

Welfare as Maternity Leave? Exemptions from Welfare Work Requirements and Maternal Employment

The Effects of California's Paid Family Leave Program on Mothers' Leave-Taking and Subsequent Labor Market Outcomes

Socio-economic inequality in childhood and beyond: an overview of challenges and findings from comparative analyses of cohort studies

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