IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/coecpo/v24y2006i3p432-445.html

The Effects Of Government‐Mandated Family Leave On Employer Family Leave Policies

Author

Listed:
  • CHARLES L. BAUM

Abstract

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave. However, studies find either small or insignificant effects of the legislation on employment, work, leave‐taking, and wages. Perhaps employees are unable to use the leave because it is unpaid or they do not need family leave because they already may take off work via vacation, sick leave, and disability leave policies. If so, then family leave legislation may have increased employer‐provided family leave without corresponding effects on employment‐related outcomes. This article examines family leave legislation's effects on employers' family leave policies, finding positive effects. (JEL J1, J2, J3)

Suggested Citation

  • Charles L. Baum, 2006. "The Effects Of Government‐Mandated Family Leave On Employer Family Leave Policies," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 24(3), pages 432-445, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:24:y:2006:i:3:p:432-445
    DOI: 10.1093/cep/byj025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/cep/byj025
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1093/cep/byj025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Gruber, 1992. "The Efficiency of a Group-Specific Mandated Benefit: Evidence From Health Insurance Benefits for Maternity," NBER Working Papers 4157, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gruber, Jonathan, 1994. "The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 622-641, June.
    3. Gruber, Jonathan & Madrian, Brigitte C, 1995. "Health-Insurance Availability and the Retirement Decision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 938-948, September.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    5. Wen-Jui Han & Jane Waldfogel, 2003. "Parental leave: The impact of recent legislation on parents’ leave taking," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(1), pages 191-200, February.
    6. Waldfogel, Jane, 1998. "The Family Gap for Young Women in the United States and Britain: Can Maternity Leave Make a Difference?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(3), pages 505-545, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicolas R. Ziebarth & Martin Karlsson, 2014. "The Effects Of Expanding The Generosity Of The Statutory Sickness Insurance System," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 208-230, March.
    2. Sari Pekkala Kerr, 2016. "Parental Leave Legislation and Women's Work: A Story of Unequal Opportunities," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(1), pages 117-144, January.
    3. Palley, Elizabeth, 2010. "Who cares for children? Why are we where we are with American child care policy?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 155-163, February.
    4. Anand, Priyanka & Dague, Laura & Wagner, Kathryn L., 2022. "The role of paid family leave in labor supply responses to a spouse's disability or health shock," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles L. Baum, 2004. "The Effect of Government-Mandated Family Leave on Employer Family Leave Policies," Working Papers 200407, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    2. Baum, Charles II, 2003. "The effect of state maternity leave legislation and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act on employment and wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 573-596, October.
    3. Samantha Marie Schenck, 2021. "Assessing the Employment Effects of California’s Paid Family Leave Program," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 406-429, June.
    4. Jonathan Gruber, 1998. "Health Insurance and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 6762, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    6. Goodpaster Natalie K, 2010. "Leaves and Leaving: The Family and Medical Leave Act and the Decline in Maternal Labor Force Participation," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, January.
    7. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    8. Benjamin Bennett & Isil Erel & Léa H. Stern & Zexi Wang, 2020. "Paid Leave Pays Off: The Effects of Paid Family Leave on Firm Performance," NBER Working Papers 27788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2011. "Robust Inference With Multiway Clustering," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 238-249, April.
    10. Christine Jolls, 2007. "Employment Law and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 13230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jennifer Feenstra Schultz & David Doorn, 2009. "Employer Health Benefit Costs and Demand for Part-Time Labor," Working Papers 09-08, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Maclean, J. Catherine & Pichler, Stefan & Ziebarth, Nicolas R., 2020. "Mandated Sick Pay: Coverage, Utilization, and Welfare Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 13132, IZA Network @ LISER.
    13. Colm Harmon & Claire Finn & Arnaud Chevalier & Tarja Viitanen, 2006. "The economics of early childhood care and education : technical research paper for the National Economic and Social Forum," Open Access publications 10197/671, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    14. Fernández-Kranz, Daniel & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2013. "Can Parents' Right to Work Part-Time Hurt Childbearing-Aged Women? A Natural Experiment with Administrative Data," IZA Discussion Papers 7509, IZA Network @ LISER.
    15. Fernández-Kranz, Daniel & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2021. "Too family friendly? The consequences of parent part-time working rights," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    16. Uribe, Ana Maria Tribin & Vargas, Carmiña O. & Bustamante, Natalia Ramírez, 2019. "Unintended consequences of maternity leave legislation: The case of Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 218-232.
    17. Sarah Kroeger & Giulia La Mattina, 2017. "Assisted reproductive technology and women’s choice to pursue professional careers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(3), pages 723-769, July.
    18. Marco Celentani & Miguel García-Posada & Fernando Gómez Pomar, 2022. "Fresh start policies and small business activity: evidence from a natural experiment," Working Papers 2210, Banco de España.
    19. Mergele, Lukas & Weber, Michael, 2020. "Public employment services under decentralization: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    20. Roth, Jonathan & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Bilinski, Alyssa & Poe, John, 2023. "What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2218-2244.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:24:y:2006:i:3:p:432-445. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.