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Cited by 75Work-Family Balance ChallengesSocial Policies and FamilyFamily Dynamics and Relationships

The effect of California’s paid family leave policy on parent health: a quasi-experimental study.

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Lee, Bethany C., Modrek, Sepideh, White, Justin S., Batra, Akansha, Collin, Daniel F., Hamad, Rita·2020·Social Science & Medicine
DOI 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112915PMC PMC7104658
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Abstract

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.

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  • Under the parallel trends assumption, the two-way fixed effects DiD estimator can be written as the weighted average of treatment effects from multiple 2 × 2 DiDs.

    “Under the parallel trends assumption, de Chaisemartin and D’Haultfœuille25 show that the two-way fixed effects DiD estimator δ in Eq. (2) can be written as the weighted average of treatment effects from multiple 2 × 2 DiDs:14,25”

    From Advances in Difference-in-differences Methods for Policy Evaluation Research (2024) · cites this paper as [14]

    The Methods sections on Primary Analysis and DiD Assumptions describe this paper’s DiD model and its parallel-trends assumption. Neither states that a two-way fixed effects estimator is a weighted average of effects from multiple 2 × 2 DiDs; searches for that decomposition found no passage in our copy. The supplied passages have no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.74)

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  • Our results align with the conclusion in the literature that heterogeneous treatment effects-robust methods often yield similar estimates.

    “Our results align with the conclusion in the literature that heterogeneous treatment effects-robust methods often yield similar estimates.14,15”

    From Advances in Difference-in-differences Methods for Policy Evaluation Research (2024) · cites this paper as [14]

    The Results section (“Testing DiD Assumptions”; page unavailable) says some estimates were similar after adding group- and state-specific time trends. But neither that passage nor the Methods passages on DiD assumptions address methods robust to heterogeneous treatment effects or conclude that such methods often yield similar estimates. Searches for that phrase and alternative DiD estimators found no supporting passage. (LLM, conf=0.75)

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [2]Rossin-Slater M, Uniat L. Paid Family Leave Policies And Population Health | Health Affairs. Health Aff. (Millwood) [ electronic article]. 2019;(https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20190301.484936/full/). (Accessed June 21, 2019) · DOI
  2. [6]Irish A, White J, Modrek S, Effects of paid family leave policy on child and parent mental health: A quasi-experimental study. Under review.
  3. [38]Allison PD. Missing Data In: The SAGE Handbook of Quantitative Methods in Psychology. 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom: SAGE Publications Ltd; 2009 (Accessed October 19, 2019): 72– 90.(http://methods.sagepub.com/book/sage-hdbk-quantitative-methods-in-psychology/n4.xml). (Accessed October 19, 2019)

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Authors
Lee, B. C., Modrek, S., White, J. S., Batra, A., Collin, D. F., & Hamad, R.
Affiliations
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
  • San Francisco State University (US)
  • University of California, San Francisco (US)
Corresponding author
Hamad, Rita
ORCID
Venue
Social Science & Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-04
Volume
251
Pages
112915
ISSN
0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112915
PMC
PMC7104658
OpenAlex
W3011946488
Cited by
73
References
71
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 3
FWCI
11.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Social Science & Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institutes of Health
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Work-Family Balance Challenges
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Policies and Family
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
Keywords
paid family leave, self-rated health, psychological distress, overweight and obesity, alcohol consumption, mothers, fathers, family policy
MeSH terms
Adult, California, Child, Female, Health Status, Humans, Male, Parents, Cohort Studies, Parental Leave, Policy

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