Earle Alison, Mokomane Zitha, Heymann Jody
Northeastern University, USA.
Future Child. 2011 Fall;21(2):191-210. doi: 10.1353/foc.2011.0014.
The United States does not guarantee families a wide range of supportive workplace policies such as paid maternity and paternity leave or paid leave to care for sick children. Proposals to provide such benefits are invariably met with the complaint that the costs would reduce employment and undermine the international competitiveness of American businesses. In this article, Alison Earle, Zitha Mokomane, and Jody Heymann explore whether paid leave and other work-family policies that support children's development exist in countries that are economically competitive and have low unemployment rates. Their data show that the answer is yes. Using indicators of competitiveness gathered by the World Economic Forum, the authors identify fifteen countries, including the United States, that have been among the top twenty countries in competitiveness rankings for at least eight of ten years. To this group they add China and India, both rising competitors in the global economy. They find that every one of these countries, except the United States, guarantees some form of paid leave for new mothers as well as annual leave. And all but Switzerland and the United States guarantee paid leave for new fathers. The authors perform a similar exercise to identify thirteen advanced countries with consistently low unemployment rates, again including the United States. The majority of these countries provide paid leave for new mothers, paid leave for new fathers, paid leave to care for children's health care needs, breast-feeding breaks, paid vacation leave, and a weekly day of rest. Of these, the United States guarantees only breast-feeding breaks (part of the recently passed health care legislation). The authors' global examination of the most competitive economies as well as the economies with low unemployment rates makes clear that ensuring that all parents are available to care for their children's healthy development does not preclude a country from being highly competitive economically.
美国并不为家庭提供一系列广泛的支持性工作场所政策，比如带薪产假、陪产假或照顾生病孩子的带薪休假。提供此类福利的提议总是遭到抱怨，称成本会减少就业并削弱美国企业的国际竞争力。在本文中，艾莉森·厄尔、齐塔·莫科马内和乔迪·海曼探讨了在经济具有竞争力且失业率较低的国家是否存在带薪休假及其他支持儿童发展的工作与家庭政策。他们的数据表明答案是肯定的。作者们利用世界经济论坛收集的竞争力指标，确定了包括美国在内的15个国家，这些国家在十年中的至少八年都位列竞争力排名前二十。他们在这个群体中加入了中国和印度，这两个都是全球经济中崛起的竞争者。他们发现除了美国，这些国家中的每一个都为新妈妈提供某种形式的带薪休假以及年假。除了瑞士和美国之外，其他国家都为新爸爸提供带薪休假。作者们进行了类似的分析，以确定13个失业率持续较低的发达国家，同样包括美国。这些国家中的大多数为新妈妈提供带薪休假、为新爸爸提供带薪休假、为照顾孩子的医疗需求提供带薪休假、哺乳休息时间、带薪年假以及每周一天的休息日。其中，美国只保障哺乳休息时间（这是最近通过的医疗保健立法中的一部分）。作者们对最具竞争力的经济体以及失业率较低的经济体进行全球考察后明确表明，确保所有父母都能照顾孩子的健康发展并不妨碍一个国家在经济上具有高度竞争力。
