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Welcoming a new child commonly requires working parents to face challenging decisions related to balancing their career obligations with the extensive caregiving responsibilities of a new child. The brief explores the association between paid leave use and the employment stability of a specific group of parents, first-time mothers, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation’s (SIPP) Fertility History Module. The researchers' analysis finds that expecting mothers who utilize paid leave during and after their pregnancy have a greater ability to balance their career and caregiving responsibilities, and are subsequently more likely to experience employment stability. In contrast, mothers who do not utilize paid leave face a greater likelihood of separating from their jobs in order to care for a newborn child. The analysis, employing a propensity-score matching technique, finds that mothers who utilized paid leave were significantly less likely to quit their jobs before or after the birth, and were significantly more likely to work for the same employer upon returning to work.

Key Takeaways

• Mothers who did not utilize paid leave had a 34.3% probability of quitting their job before or after the birth (p<0.01). In contrast, mothers who utilized paid leave had a 2.6% probability of quitting their job before or after the birth (p<0.01). The marginal effect of quitting among mothers utilizing paid leave was -26.3% (p<0.01), with a 95% confidence interval of -25.3% to -27.3%.
• Mothers who did not utilize paid leave had a 73.3% probability of working for the same employer after the birth (p<0.01). In contrast, mothers who utilized paid leave had a 92.3% probability of working for the same employer after the birth (p<0.01). The marginal effect of working for the same employer after birth among mothers utilizing paid leave increased by 18.2% (p<0.01), with a 95% confidence interval of 14.2% to 22.1%.

Research Gaps

• These findings are subject to two notable limitations. First, this analysis limits its focus to first-time mothers. Additional research is needed to examine whether the use of paid leave benefits produces greater employment stability among other key populations of U.S. workforce. Second, while propensity score matching controls for the observable differences between first-time mothers who utilized or did not utilize paid leave, the methodology does not control for unobserved differences. Due to this inability to control for unobservable differences, the possibility exists that mothers who utilized paid leave could have differed from mothers who did not, in important ways. Despite these limitations, this analysis takes a rigorous approach to identifying a statistically significant relationship between the use of paid leave and employment stability among first-time mothers in a nationally representative sample. Given the promising findings, future research is recommended to determine if paid leave produces greater employment stability for first-time mothers. (page 3)

Citation

IMPAQ International. (2017). Paid Leave and Employment Stability of First-Time Mothers. Issue Brief—Worker Leave Analysis and Simulation Series. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.