The Effects of California Paid Family Leave on Labor Force Participation Among Low-income Mothers One Year after Childbirth

In 2004 California introduced paid family leave (PFL), providing six weeks of paid leave for mothers with a newborn baby. Parental leave contributes to mothers’ employment attachment in cross-national contexts (Baker and Milligan, 2008; Charles et al., 2001; Klerman and Leibowitz, 1997; Kluve and Tamm, 2013; Pettit and Hook, 2005; Ray et al., 2010); studies also find that PFL increases mothers’ labor market re-entry or attachment after childbirth in the US (Baum, 2002; Rossin-Slater et al., 2013; Waldfogel, 2001), and PFL increased mothers’ hours and weeks of work by 15-20% during their child’s second year (Baum and Ruhm, 2016).Understanding the effect of paid leave on employment among low-income mothers is of particular interest given their economic instability (Hill and Ybarra, 2014) as well as the long-term consequences of economic hardships on their children’s development and health (Carneiro et al., 2015). Paid parental leave may be more salient to vulnerable mothers’ labor force participation than advantaged mothers with bachelor’s degrees (Byker, 2016) because the former group has limited benefits and work protections (Clemans-Cope et al., 2008; Hegewisch et al., 2010) and often experiences greater financial constraints during leave-taking (Waldfogel, 2001; Klerman et al., 2012). Lower-income women are more precariously attached to the labor force at the time of pregnancy and birth than are more educated women and they have limited benefits and work protections (Hegewisch et al., 2010) and experience financial constraints around leave-taking (Waldfogel, 2001; Klerman et al., 2012). They are likely to face difficulties in fulfilling childcare and work responsibilities (Meyers and Jordan, 2016) due to expensive childcare (Giannarelli and Barsimantov, 2000), relatively unstable childcare support (Gordon et al., 2008; Hofferth and Collins, 2000), and lack of work protections (Johnson and Corcoran, 2003; Waldfogel, 2001; Henly and Lambert, 2005; Presser, 2003; Presser and Cox, 1997). Thus, California PFL (CA PFL) can potentially reduce labor market exits around childbirth among low-income mothers (Appelbaum and Milkman, 2011) because it provides an affordable leave to mothers who have significantly lower access to paid leave through employer-provided benefits (Shepherd-Banigan and Bell, 2014).However, if PFL does not narrow the stratification in access to paid maternity leave it may not have an impact on labor participation among low-income mothers. Ther