The Overworked American Parent

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Maxine Eichner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Significant Cost ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
The Government ◽  
Do So

This chapter asks why Americans work such long hours and have so much difficulty balancing work and family lives. The answer, it asserts, lies in our lawmakers’ choice to favor markets over families. Families in the United States have to strike the balance between work and family on their own, with no help from the government. They must do so in an economy characterized by pervasive inequality and insecurity. Other countries help families strike this balance through a range of measures, including limits on mandatory work hours and paid parental leave. They have also intervened to reduce economic inequality and insecurity. In the United States, the result of half a century of failing to regulate markets to support families is that adults wind up working long hours in order to provide for their families. Even workers who succeed in the brutal economic competition that our economy incentivizes do so at significant cost to their family lives. When they get home, these same economic pressures cause parents to spend long hours intensively parenting their kids in efforts to ensure that they too can succeed in the economic competition once they become adults.

The Value of Postponing Pregnancy: California’s Paid Family Leave and the Timing of Pregnancies

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1467-1499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirlee Lichtman-Sadot
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Status ◽  
Hispanic Origin ◽  
Monetary Benefit ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Lower Education ◽  
Paid Parental Leave ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Conditioning a monetary benefit on individuals’ family status can create distortions, even in individuals’ seemingly personal decisions, such as the birth of a child. Birth timing and its response to various policies has been studied by economists in several papers. However, pregnancy timing – i.e. the timing of conception – and its response to policy announcements has not been examined. This paper makes use of a 21-month lag between announcing California’s introduction of the first paid parental leave program in the United States and its scheduled implementation to evaluate whether women timed their pregnancies in order to be eligible for the expected benefit. Using natality data, documenting all births in the United States, a difference-in-differences approach compares California births to births in states outside of California before the program’s introduction and in 2004, the year California introduced paid parental leave. The results show that the distribution of California births in 2004 significantly shifted from the first half of the year to the second half of the year, immediately after the program’s implementation. While the effect is present for all population segments of new mothers, it is largest for disadvantaged mothers – with lower education levels, of Hispanic origin, younger, and not married. These results shed light on the population segments most affected by the introduction of paid parental leave and on the equitable nature of paid parental leave policies.

A Better America

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-201
Author(s):  
Lane Kenworthy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Profit Sharing ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Housing Assistance ◽  
Earned Income ◽  
Paid Parental Leave

Abstract: If the United States were to expand some of its existing public social programs and add some additional ones, many ordinary Americans would have better lives. I offer recommendations to add or improve health insurance, paid parental leave, a child allowance, unemployment insurance and wage insurance, sickness insurance, disability assistance, social assistance, pensions, eldercare, housing assistance, early education, apprenticeships, college, affirmative action, full employment, the minimum wage, the Earned Income Tax Credit, profit sharing, infrastructure and public spaces, and paid vacation days and holidays. After outlining the details for each of these, I turn to how much it will cost and how to pay for it.

Paid parental leave for surgeons in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliza M. Slama ◽  
Helen M. Johnson ◽  
Yangyang R. Yu ◽  
Hibba Sumra ◽  
Maria S. Altieri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
Paid Parental Leave

Government Goes into Business: Parcel Post in the Nation's Political Economy, 1880–1915

1994 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Kielbowicz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
State Action ◽  
Savings Banks ◽  
The Government ◽  
Dramatic Departure ◽  
Do So

From today's vantage point, the radical potential originally envisioned for parcel post is hard to imagine. One historian facilely characterized postal savings banks (1910) and parcel post (1912) as small incremental advances in the evolution of state action: “From legislation designed to restrain harmful practices in big business, it was but a step for the government to embark in business on its own accord.” Yet parcel post marked a dramatic departure in public-sector initiatives: it put the federal government in the transportation business to compete with well-established private firms. That the United States started parcel post so late – it was the last major industrialized nation to do so – suggests the extent to which the service raised fundamental questions about the proper sphere of state action.

Public Policies to Help Dual-Earner Families Meet the Demands of the Work World

ILR Review ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice H. Cook
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Private Organizations ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
Work World ◽  
Do So

This paper focuses on the problems of families in which both spouses work, which have grown rapidly as a percentage of all families in recent decades. The author argues that the United States has been conspicuous among advanced industrialized countries in failing to develop national policies responsive to the needs of such families, and that the few enlightened employers, states, municipalities, and private organizations that have attempted to correct for that omission have been able to do so only incompletely. She cites examples of programs in some European countries that provide for child care, maternity and parental leave, leave for care of sick family members, transportation to and from work, and special housing, and argues that the proven experience of other countries should be helpful in fashioning needed programs of this sort in the United States.

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