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Abstract:
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This study investigates women's post-childbirth leave-taking behavior in the United States under the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Under this Federal legislation, parents are guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave from work following the birth or adoption of a child. A new parent must be employed by a company with at least 50 employees and have worked for his or her current employer for at least 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months to be eligible for leave. The goal of this Act is to help new parents ease the competing pressures of work and family. While previous studies indicate that leave-taking among new mothers has increased under the FMLA, employee surveys also reveal that the financial burden of unpaid leave is a significant deterrent for many new parents. Using data from the 2006 March Supplement of the U.S. Current Population Survey, this study tests the hypothesis that women with higher levels of personal or family income are more likely than women with lower income levels to take post-childbirth parental leave under the FMLA. The results of this study indicate that personal and family income are determining factors in a woman's leave-taking decision, and suggest that state-level paid leave policies may be an effective way to promote leave-taking across the income distribution. These results have implications for the future of parental leave legislation. Lower-income women are less likely to take post-childbirth leave despite FMLA coverage, adding weight to the argument made by FMLA critics that leave-takers must be at least partially compensated if the policy is to significantly ease the work-family pressures facing lower-income families. More broadly, the results of this study suggest that policymakers must be mindful of the relationship between income and family-friendly policy usage if they are to design and implement effective and equitable family-friendly policies. |