Essays on paid family leave

This dissertation examines the effects of state paid family leave policies on gender inequality, family decision-making, and child outcomes in the US. Across three chapters, I study how these policies affect the gender gap in employment, earnings, and labor force participation after childbirth, parents’ leave-taking and time allocation, and children’s academic performance. Together, the chapters provide new evidence on the mechanisms through which paid family leave policies affect parents and children, and highlight their potential role in shaping gender equality in labor markets, intrahousehold gender dynamics, and child development. An important contributor to the persistent gender inequality in labor markets is the unequal distribution of childcare between mothers and fathers. In Chapter 1, I study the role of fathers' leave-taking after childbirth as a factor that can mitigate this inequality. Using the staggered adoption of six state paid family leave policies between 2004 and 2020 and a pseudo-panel of parents, I estimate the effects of paternity leave-taking on the gender gap in employment, earnings, and labor force participation in the US. I find that in states with paid family leave policies, child penalties (the difference in changes that men and women experience after childbirth) in employment and labor force participation are 12% and 15% smaller, respectively. Additionally, women whose husbands took paternity leave are 16% more likely to be employed and 13% more likely to be in the labor force in the year of or immediately following childbirth than women whose husbands did not. Chapter 2 explores the mechanisms through which paid family leave policies and spousal leave-taking increase mothers' labor force attachment by examining the policy effects on both mothers’ and fathers' leave-taking and time allocation at home. Using monthly Current Population Survey data from 1995–2020 and the same six state paid family leave policies, I estimate difference-in-differences models to examine policy effects on leave take-up. I also use American Time Use Survey data from 2003–2020 to study parental time allocation. I find that paid family leave policies increase paternity leave-taking among first-time fathers by 0.5 percentage points (71% relative to the pre-policy mean). Fathers on paternity leave spend 85 more minutes on childcare than fathers not on leave (79%). This highlights the importance of fathers' leave-taking and time spent on childcare as a channel through which paid family leave policies and spousal leave-taking increase mothers' labor force attachment. In Chapter 3, I explore how paid family leave policies affect children's educational outcomes through these increases in parental time investment during infancy. These policies reduce the cost of taking time off work following the birth or adoption of a child and may affect children's long-run educational outcomes through improvements in infant health, increased time investments of parents with infants, and reductions in parental stress. I use several difference-in-difference methods to estimate the effects of state paid family leave policies on fourth and eighth graders' performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from 2007 to 2022. I find evidence that California's paid family leave program improved students' performance on the NAEP math and reading exams by 0.13-0.36 standard deviations. I do not find evidence of a statistically significant treatment effect in New Jersey.