Monday, July 28, 2014
Paid Leave Seen As Way To Stop Decline Of Women in Workforce
As economists search for an explanation for why the percentage of women in the United States who are working or want to work has been declining, new evidence suggests that one way to stem the dip would to be mandate policies like paid leave.
A new report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers finds that the U.S. is the only developed nation not to offer paid maternity leave as part of federal policy. An earlier study by researchers at Cornell University found that family-friendly policies in other countries explain nearly a third of the decrease in women’s labor force participation in America relative to those countries between 1990 and 2010.
Additional evidence of the benefits of paid leave is seen in California. After it became became the first state to offer paid parental leave, new mothers were more likely to return to work, according to one study....