Does Paid Family Leave Save Infant Lives?

A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that the implementation of a six-week paid family leave in California/USA reduced the post-neonatal mortality rate with larger effects for infants with married mothers and infant boys.


GLO Discussion Paper No. 874, 2021

Does Paid Family Leave Save Infant Lives? Evidence from United States Download PDF
by
Chen, Feng

GLO Affiliate Feng Chen

Author Abstract: One goal of the paid family leave (PFL) is to help working mothers balance their careers and family responsibilities and hence improve the well-being of their infants. However, most studies of PFL on early childhood outcomes have been based on the analyses of surviving infants. If PFL reduces infant deaths, such analyses would understate the effects. Using the linked birth and infant death data in the U.S. with a difference-in-differences framework, I find that the implementation of a six-week PFL in California reduced the post-neonatal mortality rate by 0.135, or it saved approximately 339 infant lives. The effects were driven by death from internal causes, and there were larger effects for infants with married mothers and infant boys. Additional robustness checks and placebo examinations indicate that the effect is not due to confounding factors or contemporary shocks but causal.

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GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS,  EconPapers)Complete list of all GLO DPs – downloadable for free.

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