The White House released its full budget last week, and one of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises materialized along with it: paid family leave. The details of the program remain hazy, but what we do know is that states would be required to design and finance six weeks of paid parental leave for workers. It would cover mothers and fathers.
This surely sounds like a boon to working women, who (on average) do more child rearing and housework than working men do. To those who object to some of the budget cuts to social programs, the administration’s policy on family leave may even seem heartwarmingly egalitarian.
Unfortunately, a review of states and countries with government-mandated paid leave programs indicates they harm young women, whether they’re available to fathers or not. This is because parental leave policies are associated with an increase in leave-taking and childbearing, which leads to lost labor or increased health care costs for companies. As a result, employers may assume women will cost more to employ than before the policy, and company decisions to hire, promote, train or pay women less can reflect that, at women’s expense.
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