University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Health Equity Institute, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2020 Apr;251:112915. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112915. Epub 2020 Mar 9.
The U.S. is the only high-income country without a national paid family leave (PFL) policy. While a handful of U.S. states have implemented PFL policies in recent years, there are few studies that examine the effects of these policies on health. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that California's PFL policy-implemented in 2004-improved parent health outcomes. Data were drawn from the 1993-2017 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a large diverse national cohort study of U.S. families (N = 6,690). We used detailed longitudinal sociodemographic information about study participants and a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences analytic technique to examine the effects of California's PFL policy on families who were likely eligible for the paid leave, while accounting for underlying trends in these outcomes among states that did not implement PFL policies in this period. Outcomes included self-rated health, psychological distress, overweight and obesity, and alcohol use. We found improvements in self-rated health and psychological distress, as well as decreased likelihood of being overweight and reduced alcohol consumption. Improvements in health status and psychological distress were greater for mothers, and reductions in alcohol use were greater for fathers. Results were robust to alternative specifications. These findings suggest that California's PFL policy had positive impacts on several health outcomes, providing timely evidence to inform ongoing policy discussions at the federal and state levels. Future studies should examine the effects of more recently implemented state and local PFL policies to determine whether variation in policy implementation and generosity affects outcomes.
美国是唯一一个没有全民带薪家庭休假（PFL）政策的高收入国家。虽然近年来美国有几个州实施了 PFL 政策，但很少有研究考察这些政策对健康的影响。在这项研究中，我们检验了一个假设，即加利福尼亚州于 2004 年实施的 PFL 政策改善了父母的健康结果。数据来自收入动态小组研究的 1993-2017 年各波次，这是一项针对美国家庭的大型、多样化的全国队列研究（N=6690）。我们使用了关于研究参与者的详细纵向社会人口统计学信息和准实验性差异中的差异分析技术，来考察加利福尼亚州的 PFL 政策对那些可能有资格享受带薪休假的家庭的影响，同时考虑到在此期间没有实施 PFL 政策的州在这些结果方面的潜在趋势。结果包括自我评估健康状况、心理困扰、超重和肥胖以及饮酒情况。我们发现自我评估健康状况和心理困扰有所改善，超重和饮酒量减少的可能性降低。健康状况和心理困扰的改善对母亲来说更大，而饮酒量的减少对父亲来说更大。结果在替代规范下仍然稳健。这些发现表明，加利福尼亚州的 PFL 政策对多项健康结果产生了积极影响，为联邦和州一级正在进行的政策讨论提供了及时的证据。未来的研究应该考察最近实施的州和地方 PFL 政策的影响，以确定政策实施和慷慨程度的差异是否会影响结果。
